Chapter 29: The Killing Moon
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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Draco made all of these observations using about five percent of his brainspace; the other ninety-five was reserved for pure and mind-annihilating terror, which he thought was an impressively low percentage, considering.
“Lupin,” said Hermione, in a voice that was barely more than breath. Her choice of name was kinder than Draco’s; his mind was stalling on werewolf.
He gripped his wand. He prepared a Stunning spell that he knew very well would not work, because he had asked the werewolf who taught it to him.
The creature walked faster, its bony arms swinging horribly at its sides. Every step made something deep in Draco’s mind writhe with discomfort. It looked wrong. It looked like someone had taken a human body and stretched it like taffy, and then performed all manner of arcane curses on it. It looked like the kind of thing for whom existence itself was suffering.
“Draco,” said Hermione.
“Yeah, Granger.” His voice grated out through a thick strainer of fear, in coarse lumps.
Her hand found his. She laced her fingers through it. It brought him to bear. It brought his mind, which had been floating pleasantly somewhere between atmospheric layers of fear-based mania, back down to the earthly realm of normal, hair-raising terror. He slotted their fingers together. Squeezed. Felt alright — not great, but not like he was already dying.
Alright, he thought. There were, in fact, worse ways to die. Not many of them. But there were a few.
“In a few seconds I’m going to run,” she said calmly. “Would you like to run with me?”
“Interesting. It’ll try to run after us.”
“I know that. I read the textbook.”
“You recall, then, that a werewolf is a coursing predator.”
“Yes.”
“Meaning it likes to chase its prey.”
“Of course I do. But I read this one paper that said getting eaten has a one hundred percent mortality rate, so I was thinking—”
“Don’t get lippy, obviously we’re running, I’m just hypothesis testing.”
“Well! Thank you for your attention to scientific procedure!” she said, strangled, and it was a comfort to know they were both hysterical. “Would you care to run now, or let it get closer, and test a few more hypotheses?”
The werewolf dropped to all fours and broke into a dead sprint. They ran.
Branches splintered at Draco’s robes as they tore up the hill to the castle. A trawling finger of an old elm tore a cut in his cheek. Thorns and bracken grasped at his ankles like they longed for his fall. The four of them thundered through the forest with the grace and subtlety of a stampeding wildebeest, though none of its precious speed, and behind them the thundering feet of a baying creature swelled in volume until he fancied he could hear it slavering in his ear.
Fear did him a favor: it made him care not one bit about anything else. His trembling limbs — his legs sore from quidditch — the nausea of Polyjuice on an empty stomach — all these fell aside in a clean pure surge of adrenaline, which answered his hindbrain’s call to remove this dreadfully soft mortal body from danger.
He was faster than Hermione, and so nearly dragged her through some of the dicey patches, the small ravines and ledges of gnarled roots — a felled log knee-high stood in their path, and without pausing to consult her he leapt up and swung her over by their tethered hands, jumped down, and kept running, ignoring her shriek of surprise.
Harry, meanwhile, kept pace. His lack of glasses made Draco nervous, because it gave him a tendency to stumble and run into things at the time when they could least afford it, but there was nothing to be done about it. If they survived, Draco was going to weld the stupid things into his goddamn face.
It was Ron who scared him. Ron, who was carrying Daphne’s on his shoulder, and making admirable time for it, nevertheless lagged behind them, closest to the werewolf, who was faster than all of them by a margin Draco could not really bear to think about.
In the end, it didn’t matter if he thought about it, because it was true. A snarl like shredding sheet metal ripped open the air, and it was joined by Ron’s scream.
Harry whirled around.
“RON!”
Draco and Hermione skidded to a halt up the path, and he rounded in the grip of a dread so thick he thought he might throw up.
The werewolf stood on its hind legs over Ron and Daphne, who had tumbled to the ground in a tangle when Ron fell. Its skeletal torso heaved and swelled, and it threw back the unnaturally long column of its throat to howl.
Harry leapt forward. Draco had time for only one thought — a mental apology to Ron — before he threw his arms around Harry’s waist and hauled back with all his strength.
With a bellow of betrayal, Harry was torn away from his best friend’s side.
“LET ME GO! LET ME GO, HE’S GOING TO KILL HIM—”
“Yes! He’s gone, he’s down, it’s right on top of him, do you want to die too?”
Harry was inconsolate. It was not at all obvious that he could actually process the words Draco was saying. “RON!” he bellowed. “RON! RON, GET UP!”
The werewolf lunged down. Ron, with heretofore unknown agility, hurled himself to the side and rolled into the bushes, avoiding the brutal shutter of its jaws. Harry let out a wild bleat of relief.
Remaining unmoved, however, was Daphne.
“Oh God,” said Hermione in a high-pitched whisper. “Oh, God, oh God.”
The creature reared back from its first attempt, snarled, and lunged again. Its jaws snapped closed, and this time, instead of the cold whisper of air, there came the wet crunch of meat and bone.
Draco could not speak. He knew that they should be running — it was almost certainly what Daphne would do, in their place — but he was transfixed by the horror of what he was seeing. His mind had deactivated itself in self-defense.
“No,” gasped Hermione. She clamped a hand over her mouth and gagged.
After several seconds of eternity, the werewolf raised its head. Viscera covered its muzzle. Draco did not, out of respect or temerity, permit himself to look down at what lay below it.
It lurched forward and roared at them. Blood and spittle flew from its jaws.
“Professor Lupin?” said Hermione. “Please—”
“He can’t hear you.”
“Professor—”
“He killed Daphne,” said Draco, hearing his own voice distantly, in all its strange calmness. Why did he sound so calm?
“Remus,” said Harry quietly. “Poor Remus.”
A candle of fury ignited at that, and he clung to it, desperate for any feeling that wasn’t dread. Poor Remus? Poor Remus! Half of Daphne was on its teeth—
The creature took another lurching step. Draco drew his wand and with his heart in his throat he prepared the last spell he would ever cast.
Which never escaped his throat, as it happened, because a jinx from behind him hit the werewolf and launched it violently into a tree.
The trunk bent. Bark sloughed. Leaves scattered. The werewolf fell in a flounder of limbs, and Draco had not the time to even turn before his sternum gave the queasy jolt of a Seizing Charm.
He sailed backwards, feet skimming over the ground, and was dumped unceremoniously on his face in the grass. A tritone of thuds beside him sounded off for Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
A black cloak flickered in his periphery. He rolled over and sat bolt upright. It gave him two wide eyefuls of a miracle.
Severus Snape always held his wand like it was a weapon. Usually, this meant it was point-down, moved little, and used sparingly. At the moment, said wand was extended fully in front of his body and aimed at the werewolf unerringly, unflinchingly, without a quiver of hand or twitch of cheek to indicate he felt anything but the impersonal disgust of an exterminator for vermin.
Severus Snape’s wand was a weapon for a reason. The look on his face said the reason was this.
The werewolf stood up and staggered blearily into a curse that clipped off its left ear. It screamed and clawed at its head, ducking away, as Snape advanced.
“Incarcerous.”
Ropes leapt from the end of his wand like starving cobras. One lashed itself around the werewolf’s wrist and squeezed until bones snapped. The other left a red welt like a horsewhip on its chest. A third snaked up its neck, curling around its throat in a killer’s embrace. The werewolf staggered and gave a howl of pain. It cantered drunkenly at Snape, who raised his hand and not his voice, and said: “Deprimo.”
An invisible fist knocked the werewolf brutally to the ground. Its snout was hammered deep in the dirt and dragged through it, thrashing and yowling, as dirt and twigs splintered against its face. Its arms bent unnaturally behind its back as the force laid it flat and held it down, twitching, at the unwavering point of Snape’s wand.
“Sonoraria,” he intoned, in tones so calm they neared boredom.
From Draco’s view, nothing happened, but the werewolf felt differently: it screamed, bucked, and clawed at its ears as if it wanted to rip them off.
Snape did a strange thing, then: he sighed. He spoke so quietly that Draco almost missed it.
“If I retained a single modicum of compassion for you, I would kill you,” he murmured. “Certainly Albus would.”
The werewolf writhed in the dirt, in great pain.
“But you should live to see what you are. It’s far too late, of course, for it to do any good. Only your last hours will be spent in contemplation of the revolting arrogance which has led you on this long path to your ruination, and has terminated, not unfittingly, with the slaughter of a child.” He paused. “I regret only that it will make your death a considerable relief to you.”
A flick of his wrist ended the spell. The werewolf ceased writhing and slumped in a shuddering heap.
Snape put his wand-tip nearly flush to its head. “That said. You will be amazed, Remus, at the things that fail to kill you.”
“So would you, Snivellus.”
And Sirius Black strode out of the shadows.
His frayed overcoat swept behind him like a mantle of raven-wings. His wand dangled from his bony fingers, loose and lazy, dangerous like a smoldering fuse. In his eyes there lay not the slightest degree of levity, nor apprehension, nor even lack of murderousness, any one of which, Draco thought, would have been welcome.
Snape didn’t turn around.
“I told him that he was helping you into the castle,” he said softly. “I told him again and again. Let me follow him, I said. Let me search the Shack. It was always your old hideaway—”
“You tried that once,” said Sirius, eyes glittering. “Didn’t think you’d want an encore, old sport.”
“I want you to know that I take no pleasure from this,” said Snape. “Albus said he was harmless. I told him he was foolish — a tame werewolf, I said, listen to yourself — and he said I had too little faith. Understand that I wish he had been right. I made the creature his potion. I gave him every possible chance. It was my own mistake to do so, though I ultimately lay the blame with Albus.”
“God, but I forgot how you could whinge the ear off a statue,” said Sirius coolly. “It’s always fascinating, watching you become the victim of all your stories.”
“But not yours,” said Snape, his voice silken. “That would be James Potter.”
The following silence could swallow a thunderclap without breaking. Sirius pointed his wand at the back of Snape’s head, and there were one, two, three beats where he visibly wrestled with whatever spell was on his tongue. Snape did not even deign to turn around.
Sirius wrenched his hand down and took a breath that shook his whole body. His eyes screwed closed, and when he opened them, they were wet.
“Yeah,” he said brightly. “Yeah. Hey, remember when you asked Slughorn to expel James for fancying Lily?” He gave a bitter grin that was barely more than a flashing of teeth. “Only good joke you ever made, to be honest. How’s it feel to peak at eleven?”
Snape whirled. His wand pointed between Sirius’ eyes.
“Give me a reason,” he murmured. “Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will.”
Sirius stopped dead.
“Could you?” He tilted his head. “Could you really, Snivellus? You have to mean them, you know. For James, yes, I’d believe it, and Peter I doubt you’d ever waste an Unforgivable on, but I wonder if you could manage it. For me.”
“You’re a fool if you think I’d need an Unforgivable.”
“Why? I mean, you said ‘give me a reason,’ but I’m sure you’ve got one already, or you wouldn’t be here. Asking honestly. What did I ever do to you besides serve up well-earned humiliation? Or are you still nursing a grudge over a stupid prank?”
“A prank? A prank?”
His hand shook. Draco had never seen his godfather so uncomposed, and it frightened him almost as badly as the werewolf.
“You killed her.”
Harry, who had begun to stir, fell still at Snape’s whisper.
Draco’s eyes darted to an agape Hermione, who mouthed: Her? But he didn’t know who Snape was talking about; Snape wasn’t married, had never been married, and had never thought about any women in that way, and certainly none that Sirius had ever killed.
“The Dark Lord was your weapon, perhaps, but it was by your hand they were slain. By your carelessness. By that flaw which has plagued you your whole life, the want of a held tongue.”
Sirius startled. “No,” he said suddenly. “You’ve got it wrong. Peter betrayed James and Lily.”
“Azkaban has a reputation for infecting its residents with madness. I am not surprised that your weak mind was vulnerable to it.”
“He was secret keeper! The Death Eaters got to him — it was through his mum, I figured it out — and he caved under torture. He’s been living as a rat for thirteen years, but now he’s here, on the grounds, and if you help me, we can find him—” He spoke more quickly, with palpable excitement. “And I’ll go when the dementors come. I swear on James Potter’s unavenged grave, I’ll walk into the Kiss with my arms wide open, and you can watch every second, you snotty wet cack, if you just help me — and if you let me have him first.”
Snape’s mouth was parted.
“You are mad,” he said, after a moment. “What a pathetic pair you are. The madman and the werewolf. I — you know, I actually feared you, once.”
“Severus. Please.”
“No,” said Harry, loudly. He was standing up. His glasses were squarely on his nose. And he looked furious.
Draco realized, with no shortage of emotional distress, that he was going to have to get involved again.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Harry.
Sirius broke away from Snape. “Harry,” he breathed. “You’re alright? You’re not hurt — he didn’t hurt you? The dementors — I’m sorry, Harry, listen, I’m sorry—”
Harry swiftly stepped around him and planted himself between his godfather and Draco’s. “He’s telling the truth, and you’re not going to hurt him.”
“Like your father before you,” said Snape, each word so brittle it seemed to splinter against his teeth, “one seems to find you perpetually enmeshed in things beyond your intelligence, capability, and right to interfere with. Step aside, or I will carry you back to the castle unconscious.”
“Why don’t you listen to him?” Harry demanded angrily. “He’s telling you the truth! I saw it with my own eyes! Peter Pettigrew was here. He’s somewhere out there right now, a murderer, and you’re standing around here rehashing, what, your school drama—”
“You are an ill-tempered and arrogant child,” said Snape calmly. “It is a regrettable thing to be, though not particularly surprising, considering your forebear. But it is not a death sentence, and so I will not allow you to labor under this delusion any longer. The man behind you is a murderer. He killed your father, and—” his breath hitched— “your mother. He conspired with a Dark creature to conceal his crimes, and assuredly would have killed you also, had he not managed to delude you into taking up his defense.”
“He’s my godfather,” said Harry.
“That does not matter to him. Potter, listen to me. That man is not your family. He does not love you. He does not care for you. I would wager he never even thought of you until you became necessary for his survival. Take this on my word, and I will swear it on the grave he neglected: Sirius Black has never loved any creature on this earth besides himself.”
When Snape finished speaking, Sirius looked murderous. Harry did not. Harry was unaffected.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Harry. “But the thing is, he’s my godfather.”
A shadow rose behind Snape while he rolled his eyes. “Potter—”
There was a horrible shriek. The werewolf, wild-eyed with pain and dripping blood from its jaws, lunged at him with a wild scream.
Draco gave a hoarse cry and sprang to his feet, but Sirius was faster: in three quick strides he lunged forward and transformed. The black dog hurled itself into the air and locked its jaws around the werewolf’s neck, dragging it away from Snape.
Dog and beast locked jaw to jaw, snarling, and rolled over and over in a blur of snapping teeth. The werewolf staggered to its feet, whipping its head in the effort to shake free, but the dog held fast. Black blood welled around the wounds its teeth left in the werewolf’s throat. It whimpered where the werewolf’s claws shred through its fur, but still, it held fast.
Snape was on his feet in a flash, and swept down on Harry. “You,” he snarled, “and you — all of you are going back to the castle. Go.”
“But sir—” Hermione was distressed.
“Not a word, Miss Granger.”
“Something needs to be done about Daphne,” interrupted Ron. He was shaking, but his voice was firm.
Snape nodded shortly. “Understood. I will deal with the girl. It may not be outside my powers to save her. But you must go—”
There was a howl and a rumbling growl; Draco turned to see the werewolf taking flight. It galloped into the forest. The dog bayed and followed, nipping on its heels.
Snape hissed: “To the castle. Go,” and flew after them, his cloak billowing like the shadowy helm of a dementor.
“Sir!” Draco called, in horror. “Where are you going?”
Snape hesitated.
“Something that I should have done a long time ago,” he said. “Take your friends. Hurry. Send for the headmaster; I will deal with the beasts insofar as I am able.”
And he disappeared, too, into the Forbidden Forest.
There were several heartbeats of stunned silence. Four students stood alone in the forest glade, and one fallen alongside them.
Then Ron tripped over to Daphne’s side. He was limping badly.
“Ron, your leg,” Harry said urgently. “Did it—?”
“Nope,” Ron said crisply. “Don’t be a worrywand, it feels like a sprain. I can still walk.” His tone was one of good-natured levity concealing extreme pain.
He knelt gingerly and gathered what was left of Daphne into his arms. “Merlin,” he muttered. “She’s — God, Lupin really… Hermione, maybe don’t look.”
“I already did,” said Hermione in a small voice.
“He’s going to kill Sirius,” Harry said.
They all turned to him.
“Something he should have done a long time ago,” repeated Harry, urgently. “He said beasts, plural. That’s not… he’s talking about Sirius. Killing him. He should’ve done it the night my mum and dad died, that’s what he means.” His hands were bundled in fists at his sides. “He would’ve done it earlier, if I hadn’t stopped him.”
“Harry,” said Hermione, “whatever you’re thinking: please, please don’t.”
He was shaking his head. “Here’s — here’s what we can do, alright, you’ve got to get Daphne up to the castle, but I’ve — I’ve got to go.”
“No, you don’t,” said Draco, dumbfounded. “That’s my godfather out there, too, with a werewolf after him, and you don’t see me swooping in—”
“Yeah, but it’s different, isn’t it?” said Harry brusquely. “You know that. It’s different for me.”
Which it was. And moreover, Harry was simply different from Draco, in a deep and fundamental way, simpler, bolder, and shinier, and Draco knew it. He had understood it so long ago he couldn’t remember when it happened.
But that didn’t mean he could go gallivanting off and kill himself.
“Potter. See reason, for Merlin’s sake.”
Harry didn’t listen. He smiled, a bit sadly, and then turned and ran into the forest.
“HARRY!” shouted Ron. He swayed to his feet, holding Daphne. “I’m going to put dungbombs in his mattress for a year. Two years! Nutter.” He looked at Draco and Hermione. “I don’t — oh, damn. Neither of you can carry her, can you?”
“With Levitation Charms, we’ll manage,” said Draco. “Between me and Granger, we could even lift Goyle. As for the matter of Potter, however—”
“No, you have to go after him,” said Ron calmly. “It’s safer with two, and I’m the only one who can carry her, plus my leg would slow you down. So it’s you two.” He shifted on his bad leg and grimaced.
“What,” said Draco.
“But you’ll make sure he’s safe,” he said sternly, “won’t you. You won’t come back without him. Because I wouldn’t.”
“I say again,” began Draco.
“Yes, of course,” said Hermione. “Only if you’re sure you don’t need help taking her up.”
Ron shifted Daphne in his arms. He glanced down at her and grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “I reckon I don’t. She’s not fidgeting much, is she.”
“Straight to the Hospital Wing. I know we said Dumbledore first, but under the circumstances—”
“Of course, Hospital Wing, barmy. My priorities are in order, remember?”
“Well, I’m only saying that someone might try to stop you.”
“They can try,” said Ron darkly. Hermione nodded.
“Be safe, then,” she said bracingly. “And — a Patronus, maybe? For safety?”
“Oh, yeah. Good idea, Mione.” He wrestled his wand out of his pocket and managed a sloppy swish without letting go of Daphne. His bad form, Draco noticed despairingly, did nothing to impede the quality of his Patronus, which erupted more corporeal than ever: a pure silver sheepdog, which ran a merry circle around the glade and then came to nudge at Ron’s ankles, herding him towards the castle.
Hermione cooed. “It’s beautiful, Ron.”
“Not bad,” Ron admitted. “I was thinking of… well, doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
He saluted. “And if I don’t see you,” he said, “then you should know, for the record — drinking that potion was the worst thing either of you ever made me do.”
Hermione laughed. Draco narrowed his eyes.
And assuming a businesslike stride, Ron loped up towards the castle, his Patronus yipping at his heels.
It was dark in the Forbidden Forest. In other news, water was wet, and Draco was going to kill Harry Potter. The moonlight filtered down distantly from the treetops, barely glancing the branches above their heads, winnowed all away by the time it reached the forest floor. Draco kept his wand lit at a low level and hung close to Hermione.
“I didn’t know that, about Snape,” she said, by and by. Though she didn’t raise her voice, it felt queerly loud in the silent forest.
“Neither did I,” he said, and paused. Perhaps it wasn’t better to admit that. He was his godson; he sort of felt he ought to have known. Hastily he added, “I knew they went to school together, of course. And that there wasn’t any love lost between them.”
“But why?” Hermione was ponderous. “Even if it is a case of school bullying, thirteen years is awfully long to hold onto it. Imagine if I was cross at — say, at Pansy Parkinson, for the next thirteen years. Enough to kill her! I don’t think I could do it.”
“Are you?”
“Hm?”
“Still cross at Pansy.”
“For calling me a mudblood?” said Hermione coolly. “I don’t know, I have a sort of sensitivity to it, Draco.”
“Right. Fair enough.”
“If she apologized, that would be one thing,” said Hermione absently, peering into a glade. They were winding downhill, on a path that scissored back and forth across one side of a small valley, and at the bottom there was a river that fed into a lake. “I don’t believe in… indelible sins, and such… everyone should get a second chance, but that doesn’t mean…”
“That doesn’t mean you have to like them. I understand.”
“No, that’s not it. I’d forgive her, I suppose, she’s only twelve, and she had a hell of a year — but she never—” She pulled up short. “What’s that?”
A creature cantered through the clearing. It had the body of a horse, the head of an eagle, and the eyes of an instrument of war. A broken chain dangled from its neck.
“Buckbeak!” said Hermione in delight.
“Ah,” said Draco calmly. “Good. Another thing that wants to murder us. That’s what, six? Seven, tonight? Fancy we can set them all against each other, and have a tournament.”
It gave an inquisitive screech as Hermione stepped into the clearing. She swept into a deep bow, after one heart-pounding moment of which Buckbeak sank to his scaly knees.
Miraculously, it remained there when she picked up its chain. “It looks like someone went at this with bolt-cutters. Hagrid must have freed him when the Ministry people left.”
“Marvelous. Once again, Hagrid is a friend to all beasts except humans. Get clear of him, would you? I like the number of limbs you’ve got, it suits you.”
“No,” she said incredulously. “We’ve got to help him.”
He tried not to whinge. “You’ve said that about half the things that’ve tried to kill us tonight!”
“Oh, don’t be such a wuss,” she said, uncannily channeling Ron. “Besides, if we run into Lu… into the werewolf again, then I bet you’ll be glad to have Buckbeak around.” She fumbled somewhat with its chain, and then — he squawked in fear — swung her leg over its back. “Hop up, come on!”
“No.”
“Draco Malfoy, stop whinging and get on the hippogriff!”
“It wants to eat me!”
“No, it wants to eat corn and dormice,” she said primly. “Which you’d know, if you paid attention in Care of Magical Creatures!”
“I was busier trying not to get eaten in Care of Magical Creatures.”
“Would you hurry? Harry’s out there somewhere, and he’s all alone!”
This was a clumsy hail mary, but it worked. “I’ll say this, and you can ruminate on it while we’re getting gored to death. You don’t get those kinds of teeth from eating dormice,” he muttered, but he begrudgingly swung his leg up and settled himself gingerly behind her on the hippogriff’s back.
“You have to hold on to me.”
“Oh, now she’s an expert on hippogriff riding, what can’t she do—”
“It’s like tandem riding a broomstick, idiot, you’ll slide off if you don’t have a hold. Put your arms around my waist. Surely you remember?”
She was far too smug. Something had to be done about her ego, or it’d soon collapse the gravity of the planet.
He put his arms stiffly around her waist. She let him hold onto the chain, which made him feel better, and then flicked the chain to start the hippogriff, which made him feel worse. It hissed and cantered forward, a jolting, horribly bouncy ride that made him feel like he was strapped atop a stagecoach going over lava fields.
“Ow! My head!”
“Just hold still, honestly—”
“You hold still, if it’s so easy.”
“—not my fault it’s moving around, hold on better—”
“Fine,” he snapped, and he hauled himself forward until his knees slotted around the outside of her thighs. “There. Happy?”
She squeaked. “Good,” she said thinly. “Just fine, so long as you stop complaining.”
The hippogriff trotted smoothly through the midnight forest. The rhythm of its gait bumped Hermione’s back against his chest, and he resigned to ignore it, along with the way the wind whipped her hair against his face, and the way his arms got sore from holding himself against her. The whole thing was dashed uncomfortable and not at all how riding horseback had been advertised to him — but then, most horses didn’t have the will to power.
They reached a lip overlooking the lake, and Hermione cast Lumos. The light filtered down over the little bowl of the valley, revealing a black span of water, a thin slice of pebbled beach — and on the other side, two figures, hunched low in the reeds, their faces indistinct. A silver stag paced in the air beside them, its head high.
“Harry? Harry!”
“Shh, don’t bring the whole forest down on us.”
Hermione did not answer but did what he considered possibly the only stupid she had ever done: she nudged Buckbeak’s side with her heels.
Buckbeak squawked and leapt straight into the dark air. Draco let out certain sounds that did not bear repeating and clung to it with every ounce of strength quidditch had ever imparted. This was a good deal more than Hermione had, who launched heedlessly into screaming as soon as they took flight. He clapped a hand over her mouth and wrapped the other one around the chain, and with gritted teeth, he held on for her sake, too.
The great wings pumped powerfully beneath them. Air and water rushed under their feet as Buckbeak glided over the lake, which drifted up beneath them quickly — too quickly — Draco thought for a sickening moment they were going to plunge inside — and then it was pebble and grass, and its claws touched down with uncharacteristic grace in the dirt. The creature galloped to a halt, and Draco wasted no time in vaulting as far away from its back as he could.
Hermione hunched over on its neck, trembling. “Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t… oh, I really didn’t think it would do that. Had no… no idea.”
He patted her on the leg, still doubled over for breath. “Not one word,” he gasped, “about quidditch. Ever. You madwoman.”
She gave a stifled whimper and slipped down. He reached up to catch her and lowered her onto the moss.
Hermione took a deep breath and knocked her head against his collarbone. He looked down, surprised.
“Interesting,” she said. “I — do you know, I hate flying? All flying. It’s not just broomsticks, I’ve recently discovered.”
“If it keeps you away from hippogriffs, I’ll take the good with the bad.”
“Yes. Certainly. Mm. Let’s… oh, Harry, is he…”
They turned to the figures on the beach. It was Harry, bent over a shabby man in a coat, facedown.
Hermione said a word that made Draco snort in appreciation, and raced over to his side.
“Harry! Harry, are you alright? Is he…?”
Harry lifted his face from Sirius’ cloak. His cheeks were wet. “Snape went after Lupin,” he said hoarsely. “He hit Sirius with… with some sort of curse, I don’t know what, but he isn’t waking up.”
“Ennervate.”
“Tried that,” croaked Harry, as the spell vanished ineffectually into Sirius’ chest. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t respond to the counter-jinx. I dunno how to wake him up, so I’ve just been trying to keep the dementors away.”
“We’ll take him up to the castle, and Dumbledore can have a look,” said Hermione seriously. “There’s not a spell he can’t undo. Or Madam Pomfrey. Ron’s already gone up with Daphne—”
“You said Snape went after Lupin?” Draco said queasily. That his godfather was quite probably one of the strongest wizards alive did not enamor him with the possibility of his facing off against an angered werewolf.
“Yeah. Remus threw Sirius off, and then Snape hit Sirius with a jinx — I think to hold him in place — and ran after Lupin. I think he meant to come back for Sirius once he’d… once he’d…”
“He’s not going to kill Lupin.” Hermione rubbed Harry’s shoulder, bracingly but perhaps none too comfortingly, as if she were trying to scrub his anxiety out of his skin. Nevertheless, Harry seemed calmed. “He said so, didn’t he? He wants Lupin to stand trial, for…”
She trailed off and traded a hopeless look with Draco. There was no way to frame what Lupin had done in any way that would exonerate him. If he was lucky, they’d only give him the Kiss. If not, then Snape was still right — there was a lot that happened in Azkaban that didn’t involve death.
Draco said, as tactfully as he was able: “He’ll have the chance to defend himself.”
“But it’s the Ministry’s fault,” snarled Harry. Draco and Hermione both startled. “If he hadn’t been trapped in his office, he’d have taken his potion, and he wouldn’t — they wanted him to transform, they were baiting him — I bet they wanted someone to get hurt, so they could—”
“Even if you’re right, they were probably aiming for the aurors, not the students,” said Hermione quietly. Both boys looked at her. “That would be much cleaner. He transforms, attacks an auror, they subdue him, he goes to Azkaban. That’s what I — that’s what someone would do, I suppose, if they wanted to entrap him.”
Draco inclined his head at her curiously. She shrugged.
“It’s still their fault,” said Harry stubbornly. “He doesn’t deserve to be punished for it.”
Draco thought that philosophically there was a great deal of ground they had yet to tread before they could come anywhere near that conclusion, including a discourse on the question of moral culpability in altered states and what was a reasonable expectation of risk, but the time for none of it was now. “Let’s get him out of here,” he said, nudging Sirius’ head with his boot. “Least he’s not killed anyone tonight. Not for lack of trying.”
Together, he and Hermione lifted Sirius with a pair of Levitating Charms, and maneuvered him onto the hippogriff. Harry mounted its back and tied himself to Sirius with the length of the chain, fastening their waists together. “If he starts to slip, you should let him fall,” warned Draco. “No use going diving for him, he’s probably survived worse.”
“And you should go straight back to the castle. If you see Lupin—”
“No matter what Snape’s doing to him, mind—”
“—let him be,” Hermione finished.
Harry raised an eyebrow at their little vaudeville act.
“Aren’t you two coming up?”
“No,” said Hermione.
“No,” said Draco passionately.
“I don’t think so, actually, thank you.”
“We wouldn’t fit.”
“I’m sure Buckbeak has a weight limit,” Hermione demurred.
“Even two was a strain.”
“In fact I thought he was a bit slow, don’t you?”
“You know, Granger, it was the first thing I noticed.”
Harry snorted. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I wish I could — you’ll be alright, going back?”
“Harry, of course we will,” said Hermione warmly, with a confidence that Draco didn’t feel at all. “It’s only a short walk, and there’s two of us. Take Buckbeak, really.”
She sounded confident enough that Harry seemed mollified.
Draco added, “And if you don’t stop thanking me for things like Christmas parties and not letting your godfather perish of his wounds, Potter, I swear—”
“Alright,” said Harry, grinning. “Alright.” He turned to his Patronus. “Er — stay with them, will you?” he asked it. “As long as you can.”
The stag snorted and pawed the ground with its silver hoof.
“I think that’s a yes,” he said, after a moment. “I’m not really sure. Okay. See you two soon; hurry back! I’ll tell Dumbledore to send someone out to help. Or Hagrid, if I see him.”
“Bully,” said Draco dryly. “Saved by invasion of the blast-ended skrewts.”
Harry waved good-bye, brushed Buckbeak’s flank with his ankle, and the creature galloped off into the trees.
The stag remained with them, watching a bit quizzically as its owner disappeared.
“Question,” said Draco.
“Yes.”
“That business about ‘a short walk,’ and ‘it’s fine, there’s two of us’ — that was bluffing.”
“Of course it was. We’re alone in the woods with a werewolf and a murderer, there could be four of us and it wouldn’t matter. And it’s twenty minutes to the castle, at least.”
“So. We’re still in mortal peril.”
“Oh, some sort of peril, probably,” she agreed.
He took a deep breath.
“They should have an option to list you as a cause of death on autopsy reports.”
“What! Me! What did I do?”
“Ask Saint Peter. If you’ve anything to say about it, I won’t live long enough to get the job done.”
They cut a crescent path along the lake, their way lit by the glow of Hermione’s wand and the silver stag. It was silent except for the crunch of gravel and the whisper of running water. “Who do you think sent the doe?” Hermione wondered.
He shrugged. “It could have been one of the Ministry’s.”
“You think Sibelius Nott can produce a full corporeal?”
“He’s a powerful wizard. You don’t get to be the Minister’s right hand unless you’ve got chops. Why wouldn’t he?”
“But he’s so cranky!”
“So’s Weasley, before he’s had his breakfast. That’s nothing to do with it. I’m sure there are some terribly cranky people with beautiful Patronuses. Patroni. Patronae?”
“Patronudes,” mumbled Hermione, which he resented himself immediately for laughing at, as it was highly dumb and also swotty, and neither was to be encouraged. Nevertheless, she looked pleased. “And I suppose you’d better hope so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know.”
The leaves overhead whistled in the breeze. Shifting clouds threw layers of gauze and silk over the opalescent moon. They followed the brook through the forest until it widened, and fed into a thick stream that slipped through winnowing trees and onto the round silver plate of the Black Lake.
“But we’re on the other side of it, now!” said Hermione excitedly. “We came in at the other end. Did Buckbeak take us that far?”
Draco shivered. “Space can move differently in magical places, Granger. Best not to think about it.”
The friendly lights of the castle glimmered through their white stoles of mist. A distant, crooning howl wavered in the air. They both fell silent, though it was so far that there was no chance of them being overheard.
“At least he’s alive,” said Hermione after a moment.
Draco did not comment on the fact that this was the kindest thing either of them could think to say about him.
There was movement in the reeds ahead. Draco put a finger to his lips, and they crept forward with their wands extinguished, stepping softly on the gravel beach. Harry’s Patronus fell in step with them, queerly silent.
It was a man, laid on his back in the clump of bullrush. He was groaning and holding his leg as if someone had put an awl through his knee, although the moon gave insufficient light to see if it was merited.
“Help… help, oh, help… help me…”
“He’s been hurt,” whispered Hermione. Draco, keenly aware that this was Hermione’s trigger phrase for unwise action, held his arm in front of her.
“Hold on. Can you see his face?”
“No; can you?”
“I think it’s Pettigrew.”
He was in a sorry state: the right leg of his trousers was stained all through with blood. His face was smeared with mud where he had been rolling at the lake’s edge. He had attempted to bury himself.
“Black must have gotten to him, after all,” he said.
“Or Lupin,” said Hermione. Her tone was strange: she was staring at Pettigrew with intense and ungenerous scrutiny, like he was an Arithmancy program she’d twice gotten wrong.
“What.”
“Nothing. It’s just… it didn’t occur to me before, but that’s… that’s the man who killed Harry’s parents.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said, thinking once more that there was philosophical ground left untilled on the subject; but then she raised her wand, and he squawked, grabbing her wrist. “Granger! What are you doing?”
Her eyes blazed. “He’s an evil man.”
“I’m not sure evil is a useful — never mind that. Think strategically. If we bring him in, it’ll clear Black’s murder charge.”
“The Ministry is a corrupt, backwards, bigoted, antiquated—”
“—political body with discrete, if problematic, interests, and killing innocent wizards isn’t one of them. Believe it or not, they’re not going to off Black just for laughs. Also — Granger, come off it, really, you’re not going to kill him. Not even for Potter.” He said, more quietly: “He wouldn’t want you to, anyway.”
Hermione huffed instead of agreeing.
“Incarcerous.”
Ropes erupted from the tip of her wand and lassoed Pettigrew’s hands together. He thrashed upright, shouting.
“H-h-help! He’s after me, he wants to k-k-kill me—”
“Shut him up,” Draco snarled, “he’s going to bring half the lake down on us—”
But Pettigrew didn’t need a Silencing Charm: he choked on his own spittle. His eyes had fallen on the Patronus, and they grew so large the animal could have cantered through them.
A sickly, ash-pale cast crept over his skin. He gave a horrible quake. “Oh,” he said. “Oh — oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“What’s his problem?” hissed Draco.
“I don’t know! Search me!”
Pettigrew wiggled backwards, writhing like a worm. “No,” he moaned. “Please, please — I’m s-s-sorry, you must believe me, please! I didn’t mean it — s-s-see how I p-p-protected the boy, I t-t-tried to…”
Harry’s Patronus bucked its head mildly and took a few steps forward; in response to which Pettigrew screamed as if someone had planted a stake in his heart.
“Please! Please, Prongs!”
Hermione gripped Draco’s shoulder. “He thinks it’s James Potter,” she whispered.
And Draco saw what she meant: for in the moonlight, through tuffets of fog, to a man half-delirious with pain and the residual madness of thirteen years spent as a rat, Harry’s Patronus could very well be mistaken for a ghost.
“It was always you and me,” breathed Pettigrew. “Always you and me. First, wasn’t it? You were my f-f-friend first. The boys from the Hollow. Brothers. And, and, and I always did right by you, didn’t I, Prongs?”
Harry’s Patronus, apparently bored of Pettigrew’s whinging, dropped its head — ostensibly to sniff at a patch of grass — but Pettigrew, mistaking it for a charge, screamed and whipped out his wand.
“Draco, he’s got—!”
“I know, move—”
One of them moved first, though unclear who, because they both hit the grass in the same place more or less and knocked into each other, landing clumsily in the mud. Pettigrew’s spell lashed through the place where they’d been, sailed harmlessly through the Patronus, and struck the trunk of the Whomping Willow, where it cleaved the bark three feet deep. Draco thought of himself standing in the air where it passed just a moment ago, and went cold.
The Willow did something he had to call a scream, even though it didn’t have a mouth to scream with. All its branches went rigid at once, rising in a perfect halo around the black pillar of its trunk, where the wound wept sap as bright and red as blood. Then it whirled and, bending itself down, brought the full force of its body down on Pettigrew with a mighty WHOMP.
It was hard to describe the sound of a tree attempting homicide. In many ways it was like watching one fall, only faster, with purpose.
With a tremendous crunch and splintering of branches, the whole upper half of the tree rolled down like the mallet of God, making a noise that blotted out even Pettigrew’s incoherent screaming. Draco shoved at Hermione and shrilled, “Go go go go go,” feet scrambling in the slippery bank, as they careened out of the way of its hurtling branches.
Wood snapped and leaves flew. With a final groan, the Willow bent low, almost double in the middle. Some of its roots had erupted on the other side, forced up by the pressure of its exertion. The riverbank where Peter lay was covered in shattered branches, and nothing moved.
Hermione and Draco lay just clear of it, sprawled on the beaches, breathing hard. The water came up to lap at their ankles, and small red fish nibbled at the soaked ends of their robes.
“Do you think,” Hermione whispered, “did he — did that—”
“Hard to say,” said Draco, though he couldn’t imagine surviving something like that. The tree must have weighed several tons. It was like dropping a small house on someone’s head.
A coarse moaning filled the air. Black shadows coalesced in the branches of the Willow.
“They heard,” snarled Draco. “Excellent. Now I’m going to die because of a vengeful tree—”
“No time! Get up!”
They scrambled up the bank. Dementors coursed over the lake, their cloaks skimming the silver face of the water. Down from the lawns they poured, too, drawn by the Whomping Willow’s war cry.
“Where’s Harry’s Patronus? Did the tree kill it?”
“He must have cast another spell,” gasped Hermione. “They’re not lasting invocations, Patronuses — and you can’t cast two spells at once, that’s Merlin’s Second Law—”
“Fitting as it would be,” Draco gritted out, “I’m not going to die listening to you tell me things I already know. Did you ever, incidentally, manage a Patronus?”
“No!” she wailed. “I can’t! It doesn’t work for me, I’ve tried and tried—”
“Come off it, me neither. Maybe you can’t do it if you’ve got any brains. Nonetheless, wand up. We’ve got a few seconds left to master it in, and you and I have done much better in less.”
A thin wisp of silver escaped his wand and hovered like mist before him. At the same moment, Hermione sank to her knees in the grass, gasping for breath. A cold vise closed around Draco’s throat. He still stumbled to kneel beside her, and she gripped his arm for balance, her eyes fluttering in her fight to stay conscious.
He spun around, the familiar, icy cold penetrating his insides, fog starting to obscure his vision; more were appearing out of the darkness on every side; they were encircling them.
Hermione trailed off, teeth chattering. She slumped forward and braced herself on the ground. “I’m so c-c-c-cold,” she murmured. “S-s-s-so cold.”
“Granger. Granger,” he said sharply, shaking her. She gave an uninspiring noise of protest. “Don’t go to sleep.”
“What?”
He could barely think except to mumble, “Don’t go to sleep,” again, because something in his cold-addled mind insisted that was important. She couldn’t be allowed to fall unconscious. That was paramount. That was the one thing.
White fog descended over his eyes. There was nothing he could do. He would die here, and he would die nothing, no one. His father would revile him in hell, surely, for having done so little of consequence — and to die for what? For a man he didn’t even know, who his rightful family had rejected long ago, and who would probably die tonight, anyway. And he would not even have the pleasure of dying for something noble. He would die because he’d been too stupid to save himself.
What a pathetic end. What a pathetic life.
Something happy, he thought. Something happy.
Christmas at the Manor. His mother on the piano. His father’s laugh. He couldn’t remember that too well, but he remembered he’d liked it. His first broomstick ride: the rush of air through his robes, the ground swallowed in clouds under his feet. A fleet of boats on the Black Lake. His first spell. A troll in the girl’s bathroom. Shattered toilet stalls. A smarmy little know-it-all who did everything first, best, and perfectly—
Well, of course it didn’t work. That wasn’t a happy memory, dolt.
Hermione let out a final breath and dropped to the ground.
“Granger. Get up. Get up. This was your idea, you don’t get to… to skip out…”
His head was full of cold fog. His eyes fluttered closed.
Warm afternoons over a cauldron. Smoke rising in thick coils against a vaulted roof, sunlight streaming through frosted glass, the foul smell of Polyjuice, a witch throwing bits of paper at him. Doing it perfectly, the first time. Doing something important. You should donate your brain to science! The color of the light on her hair always reminded him of marigolds. There had been a room full of them, and they’d been sitting on a bed, talking about Transfiguration. She’d missed classes and asked him to give her the homework. He’d stolen the sweets people left at her bedside, and she’d tried to pull his hair when she found out — he held the wrapper over his head and she’d well nearly tackled him, candy and Transfiguration notebooks everywhere, and after that he’d been picking her hairs off his robes for days, in that warm, summery hospital ward that smelled of flowers.
“Expecto patronum.”
From his wand blossomed a profusion of mist. It swirled together in the air over his head, gaining shape. It sprouted two wide feathery wings, a pair of talons, a heart-shaped face.
It soared high over the lake, its wings trailing ribbons of silver mist, and everywhere the mist fell, dementors scattered. The fog overhead unspooled itself and unveiled a bright bowl of stars like crushed diamonds. The air was warm again, warm like the first night of summer, warm like the nights he’d spent in the hospital wing last year.
Draco laughed, high and loud and delighted.
A fuzziness was encroaching on his head, so it was in something less than full lucidity that he congratulated himself, and scripted mentally the boast he’d make to Hermione, once she woke up. He’d done it. Exhausted, sleep-deprived, on an empty stomach and a gut full of fear, he’d done a corporeal Patronus for the first time in front of a full horde of dementors. Hermione would be eating crow for months. Hermione was going to gnaw her own teeth to nubbins with envy, and he was going to rub it in her face until she tried to kill him. Forget losing to him in Potions. Emotional magic was his bread and butter. Emotional magic was his wheelhouse. He was the god-king of incantations and alchemy and all majyyks under the sun. Oh, it was going to be so bloody good. He was going to compose an ode to himself, something full of fanfare and rhyming couplets, about how he, the brilliant and powerful Draco Malfoy, the greatest wizard of his generation, would ride eternal in the sacred bowers of living memory.
Then the greatest wizard of his generation keeled over, banged his head on a rock, and passed out.
Content warnings: Violence and gore (oblique, PG-13). Context: a teenage girl is attacked and partially eaten by a werewolf.
I’m standing by “patronudes” and owning to it. The last chapter of Book 3 will drop in a week, and I’m very excited for it. Almost as excited as I am for Book 4, which I’m halfway through and having the time of my life with. Much thanks, as always, for encouragement!
Sidebar: I’ll probably bump the rating to M after the next chapter drops. While in theory “T” should cover all PG-13 material, in practice, I think most people read “T” to be a sort of “for all ages” rating, while “G” means no romance/no sexual feelings. Many people think differently, I’m sure, but the “M” rating will comfortably cover everything I plan to do, as well as all the violence & gore (which, as we all know, upticks precipitously in the second half of the series, and — without spoiling too much — will also uptick even more precipitously in this fic).
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