Chapter 33: A Boot on Stoatshead Hill
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
He woke to something heavy colliding with his stomach.
He shot upright and lashed out with his foot, connected with something warm and moving, and kicked it again. There was a shout, a thump, and an explosion of laughter as the thing fell off him. Draco tore out of bed, whipped out his wand, and when he blinked the dizziness out of his eyes, he found himself staring down the line of his wand at Harry Potter, who was sprawled on the floor in his pajamas, cackling like a goddamn hyena.
“For God’s sake! What was that for?”
Ron, Fred, and George were clutching each other to stay upright. Harry was chortling. “Blame Ron,” he said, a bit hoarsely. “Bet me five galleons I wouldn’t. Hullo, Draco.”
“I could have cursed you!”
“Yeah, but you’d feel real sorry afterwards,” said Harry with a grin, and he held up his hand. Draco huffed and hauled him to his feet, refusing to feel even an ounce of sympathy when Harry winced.
“When did you get here, then?”
“Just now. We were due yesterday, but we decided to fly back instead of Apparating, and we got to see the whole countryside. Camped in the woods last night, got in about an hour ago. You’ve got to try flying cross-country, Draco, it’s brilliant.”
“You lost me at ‘camped.’”
Harry ignored this. He was wearing an oversized Bulgaria jersey with Ron’s old jeans, the cuffs rolled up, and his hair had grown nearly to his neck. If he had brushed it once since Draco had last seen him, it gave no evidence of it. “Charlie is wicked cool,” he breathed. “You’ve got to meet him, Draco. We talked the whole way back — he told me about dragon-taming in Romania and magizoological expeditions in Albania and Turkey, and he knew more about creatures than even Hagrid—”
“As does anyone who can tell the difference between a kitten and a cockatrice, continue.”
“He said he’d ridden on the back of a dragon, once!”
“And won a staring contest with a basilisk, I imagine?”
“I kind of thought he was telling the truth, though,” said Harry, the lovable naif, “because he had all these tips for how to steer it. Anyway, get dressed, lazy bum, I want to say hello to Hermione. Mrs. Weasley says she’s going to let us de-gnome the garden!”
“Let us?”
“Right? If we get the dishes done quick enough, that is. C’mon! It’s already seven thirty!”
“Yeah, the day’s basically over,” managed Ron, wiping tears. “Oh, Merlin, look at his face. Harry, I love you. I really, really do.”
“Which makes one of us!” said Draco sharply, and stalked off to dress.
Days at the Burrow were somehow both endless and breathlessly fast, as if time there spun on a quick closed circuit. Each day started to the rooster’s cry and the groan of water through old pipes as Percy claimed the first shower, followed by breakfast, served in buffet while people trickled down with drowsy eyes and messy hair, half of them still in pajamas. Then dishes, chores, and more chores, working merciless hours under the August sun, until his hands were calloused like sandpaper and new ridges of muscle sprouted along his arms and legs in the places quidditch had never touched. His skin darkened from near translucence to a warm shade of tallow, and he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up, the top buttons open, for fear of heatstroke. He had never dressed this casually in his life. He was still mocked for wearing oxfords around the house, but some things he refused to let slide.
The evenings, too, had a breathless rhythm. There were games of Wands and Exploding Snap and exhibitions of Percy’s fiendish talent at Euchre, and drinking games — minors played with butterbeer — designed to unearth every kind of disreputable secret known to man, which left Draco with far more knowledge of Bill Weasley’s nocturnal exploits than he had ever desired. There were quidditch matches nightly, four on four, three on five, four teams of two, or just Draco and Harry flying head to head in a battle of the seekers, playing until someone’s arms gave out, while Hermione read her way through the complete works of Henry James in the garden below. Sometimes she would laugh at something in the book, irritatingly, because at least once Draco’s resulting distraction caught him a bludger in the head.
He pitched a fit and had the score reset, but then Hermione left to help Arthur with the car, and then it wasn’t as fun to show off anymore, either.
Hermione was an ideal houseguest — Draco quite consciously was not — but Harry was hardly a guest at all. If it weren’t for the hair, he could have been a Weasley. In that tower of tiny rooms, the Boy Who Lived scrubbed dishes and sawed lumber and caked dirt up to his wrists weeding vegetables, happy as a house-elf. He helped untangle Molly’s knitting yarn and taught Arthur how to use a vacuum cleaner. Sometimes, while he was busy at some chore or activity in her proximity, Molly would reach out absently and kiss him on the head, as she did with all her children; though she never seemed to notice the slip-up until Harry looked at her and smiled.
He and Ron erected a baroque pillow fort over Ron’s bed and retreated to it for whispered conferences long into the night, until Draco hurled a pillow at them or stomped down to sleep on the couch. Once or twice he woke up and found they’d fallen asleep that way, sprawled side by side in the fort, like a pair of littermates curled against their mother’s belly.
The worst thing was the lack of space, not physically, but emotionally. It was impossible to stay out of anyone’s business. The day began with a great sardine press in one of the house’s two bathrooms, a hydra of six heads and at least forty elbows, all wrestling for not enough toothpaste and hair gel, Charlie whining whenever someone jostled his eyeliner, Ginny and Bill bickering over who left the hairball in the shower, and Ron bellowing for everyone to get out before he peed himself. And yet this kind of forced intimacy was still quite dignified compared to, for example, the cataclysm of hearing Percy dictate a breakup letter to Penelope Clearwater through the wall; walking in on Arthur Weasley’s excruciatingly earnest kitchen table heart-to-heart with the twins about their O.W.L.s; or opening a broom cabinet in search of window cleaning fluid and instead finding Ginny, crying, because Ron had snapped at her when she tried to join his game of draughts with Bill. Because in a house so small, people grew crabby and sharp-tongued and thoughtless at least a dozen times a day, and there was nothing to do except retreat as far as you could, which was never very far, until someone found you, which was never very long.
He never knew what to do when that happened, except to close the door and flee as fast as he could, his face burning.
Once the humiliation of it all receded, it was astonishing how easy it was to live with. True, he was lucky to get a five-minute shower without someone hammering on the bathroom door; true, no matter how early he woke up, he was always too late for the hot water; true, he saw more naked gingers in a week than an Irish nude beach; but trespasses were quickly forgiven, bruises soon faded, and quarrels at breakfast were forgotten by lunch. Malfoy meant nothing here; he wasn’t heir to anything in particular, just the poor cosseted lout who didn’t know what a pipe wrench was, and had to be shown how to peel a potato.
He was aware of things happening that appalled him, but some internal sensor for dismay appeared to have broken under strain. The stakes were too low. Slights that would have purebloods reaching for dueling gloves could be defused with a punchline. So at any rate, just as often as not, when Fred hip-checked him on the way out of the kitchen, or Ron stole a dinner roll from his plate, he threw an elbow and a lazy insult and forgot about it.
He was usually too tired to be fussy, anyway. Sometimes he went to sleep suspecting the Weasleys were wringing the piss and vinegar out of him like bilge from a wet sponge.
“Have you heard anything from Daphne, then?” said Ron one day.
They were in the garden, he and Draco and Harry, de-gnoming the peonies. It was dull work, one of those chores — Draco had only recently started recognizing them — meant mostly to get them out of the house, which was a dispiriting thing to think about when a leathery little creature had its teeth two inches deep in your fingers. He didn’t realize at first that Ron was speaking to him, and had to extricate the gnome from his hand before he remembered.
“No,” he said, “and I didn’t hold my breath, either. Nott says he lives in hope for the day she figures out you’ve got to attach the letter to the owl.” He peered at Ron. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I just hadn’t heard anything.”
“Why would you?” This seemed uncharacteristically audacious. “You don’t know her.”
Ron’s forefinger delayed a verdict. “One, we went to a party together. Two, I watched her whole situation get torn up by a werewolf, which is pretty damn personal. And three—”
“Shh,” whispered Harry, nodding back up at the house. Voices carried from the garden.
Ron lowered his voice. “And three, she told me about her secret you-know-what thing. And she said she liked my hair.”
“Which casts into question her eyesight, if not her judgment, but doesn’t—”
“Come off it, I just wanted to know if you’d heard anything about the W-O-L-F situation.”
Draco stared at him.
“I understand having doubts,” he said, “but I assure you, all of your siblings can spell.”
“No news is good news, though, right?” said Harry hopefully, speaking over the whispered squabble that broke out between Draco and Ron. “We’d know something about it if she got sicker, or wasn’t going to come back to school. Remember that letter McGonagall sent when Petrovsky transferred?”
Draco did not want to backslide into a conversation about Daphne Greengrass, her various maladies, or the likelihood that one of them would remove her from their lives forever. In fact he hadn’t heard anything from her, and he had worried about it more than he liked to say. On full moons, he found himself thinking about her, and wondering how difficult it would be to make a Wolfsbane Potion.
They were interrupted by Arthur Weasley coming out of the house with a tray of lemonade, bearing a porkpie hat and a grin.
“Hello, boys!” he called. “Molly had me bring this out! Said you could use a break.”
“Quite,” said Draco emphatically, and seized the opportunity to vault his gnome carelessly into the grasses. Harry and Ron punted theirs far over the hedge and shuffled in to take tall frosted glasses of lemonade so sweet it stung.
“Not working too hard, are you?” chirped Arthur. “It’s summer, after all! I’m nipping into the shops later today, if you fancy a change of scenery.”
“I’d love to, Mr. Weasley,” said Harry at once.
Ron shrugged. “Might as well,” he said to Draco. “Best shot to get out of chores. Dad, can we invite Hermione? I think she wanted to buy muggle sunblocker, or something.”
“Certainly! But fair warning: I will insist she explain what it is,” said Arthur. “Sunblocker! Cavities! Light bolbos! She’s invaluable. I may ask her to come in to the office.”
“Surely there are muggle-borns in the Muggle Artifacts office,” said Draco, with a slight curl to his lip.
“Not as many as you’d think! In fact most of them don’t find it all that interesting, so they end up elsewhere. Or they haven’t a clue what we’re talking about — they’ll be the first to tell you that being muggle-born doesn’t mean you understand muggle technology. Not many of them know as much as Hermione.”
“Understatement of your life.”
“Anyway,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “how’s this sound: we’ll nip round to the grocer’s, get some staples — pop in at the auto shop, of course, just to look — then what say we get ice creams on the way back? My treat? And, er — there’s no need for your mother to know about this.”
Draco, who enjoyed a good bribe as much as the next Malfoy, agreed. Molly had forbade them all from any visits the auto shop, that den of autovehicular temptations, but there had been no promises of ice cream with her orders.
“Know about what, Mr. Weasley?” said Harry, a perfect cherub. “We’re only getting groceries.”
“Good lads!” Arthur ruffled Harry’s and Ron’s hair. Draco frayed half the nerves in his body with fear he would try the same with Draco, but what happened was far worse: he turned to Draco, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “You’ve done some fine work today, too, son,” and whatever happened in Draco’s chest fell somewhere between a gag reflex and a stroke.
By the thinnest skin of his teeth he did not flinch away, never mind if he cracked a molar, and when Arthur’s mind caught up to whatever was happening on Draco’s face, his obvious disappointment was enough to make him crack another.
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry about that, Draco. That was… careless phrasing.”
And that, of all things, was what choked him — not the days of hard labor and exhaustion, the probable influence of heatstroke, and the mind-wrenching desire to shuck his own skin like a cornhusk and run away — but the fact that an adult man had recognized his discomfort, and tried, however fumblingly, to make it better.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, “and I don’t care. One of you go tell Granger we’re going, if she’s still alive; she started a load of laundry two days ago and hasn’t been heard from since.”
The afternoon melted into a clear summer’s night, with a floral breeze, and the slim claw of the moon cutting open its wide bed of blue satin. Mrs. Weasley served dinner in the garden. Bill and Charlie levitated the chairs out of the house, letting Ginny and Ron and Harry cling to the seats while they wheeled them wildly through the air — Hermione hovered by the door, nearly levitating herself with anxiety — and Percy shouted out his window to complain of the noise. Molly produced deep platters of chicken cacciatore and salted potato wedges and garden salad with cucumbers and peas, laid up the table, and they ate all twelve of them together, passing plates in the same game of strategy and reflexes that all mealtimes became.
“Of course, I’ll have to work while we’re there,” Percy was saying, gesturing more emphatically than usual with his elderflower wine. “It’ll be my first chance to see Mr. Crouch since June. As you know, we’ve got another big event to organize right after the World Cup — you know the one I’m talking about, Father? The top-secret one?”
Ron muttered to Draco, “He’s desperate for us to ask what that is. Probably an exhibition of thick-bottomed cauldrons.”
In the middle of the table, Molly was interrogating a fidgeting Charlie about his work. Charlie was a loud, belligerently optimistic man of twenty-one, who took after his father both in build (spindly) and cadence (enthusiastic). He wore a double-ring of eyeliner and purple shading around his eyes, and enough bangles on his black jacket that he could hardly reach for the wine without jingling. Despite the gothic affect, he was rather pleasant to talk to, or would have been, had he not been undergoing an inquest.
“…do keep a safe distance from them, don’t you?”
“Can’t keep ’em tame from a safe distance, Mum!” he said cheerfully. “Wouldn’t be paying me for much, if I did! Anyway, s’ not so bad — only been chomped two or three times—”
“Two or three!”
“Besides, I’m skipping the hardest job all year! Ministry just placed a he-yuge order into Britain. Feel a bit bad about it, to be honest, I left Witty and Midge to handle Berta all on their own, even though I’m the only one who can get her to take her nighty-time potion—”
“And the, er… makeup, dear? Do any of the other men do that?”
“Mum, don’t be prejudiced,” said Ginny at once. “You offered to buy me makeup last year.”
“It’s different with girls,” said Molly primly. “I’m not telling Charlie not to, I’m only asking whether a lot of other men do it. It’s been a while since I was your age.”
“Sure, loads of boys wear it,” interrupted Bill, reaching for the peas. “My flatmate does a full face every night.”
“He does! But why—?”
“Who cares? It’s none of my business,” said Bill firmly, in a way that meant he did know, but thought it was none of hers. Then he ruffled Charlie’s hair and gave him another helping of peas.
Dessert was homemade strawberry ice cream, with fresh blackberries and whipped cream. By the time they had finished, there was a host of moths congregated around the candles, and the air sparkled with fireflies. Crookshanks darted underfoot, chasing gnomes, happier than Draco had ever seen him. Draco had eaten more than he meant to and felt warm and sluggish, ready to keel over and sleep for a month, but instead he was bullied to his feet to help clear plates.
Ron caught him and Hermione on their way inside. “Me and Harry are going to check out the shed,” he muttered. “C’mon.”
“It’s just a car,” said Draco, mostly to prove he knew what a car was, but they still followed Ron into the whitewashed old barn.
Ron hauled the door open, and it ratcheted back on rusty tracks, groaning. A single round light blazed to life overhead, illuminating a thatched floor and an old baby blue car. Car parts were scattered around it like a sacrificial ring, most of them defunct or broken, some of them menacing. It smelled of dead grass and wood.
He shut the door and slid the deadbolt into place with a grunt. “There,” said Ron. “Figure we’ve got about five minutes before Ginny comes nosing, but that’ll have to do.”
“Your dad’s got a Ford Anglia?” said Harry curiously, circling the car. “My Aunt Marge has one of these. This is in better condition than hers, though.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Who cares?” said Ron. “I wanted to ask if you’d heard from Sirius.”
Hermione stood at attention. It was the first time they’d brought up Sirius or Lupin since Draco arrived, and he was curious, too: even more curious when Harry folded his arms around his chest, quickly, like there was a bird in his chest he didn’t want to set free.
“Yeah,” he said softly, “twice. He sounds okay. I wrote to him yesterday.”
“That’s great! What’s he say?”
“Er. Not much,” said Harry. “They’re somewhere far south, way out of the country. Somewhere warm. Hard for the dementors to travel. They’re camping a lot, since they can’t get too close to any towns.”
“Why not?”
“Because they haven’t got any Wolfsbane Potion, obviously,” said Draco. Hermione nodded silently, chewing her thumbnail.
Ron shuddered. “So he’s hacking it raw every full moon?”
Harry shifted uncomfortably. “Sirius says he helps him through it, some, the way they did when they were kids, but it’s not easy… makes it hard to hide, too. They can’t stay anywhere, too long.”
Hermione had abandoned her thumbnail to start fussing at her sleeves, whaling on a loose thread as if it had done something to her.
“What’s wrong?” said Ron, noticing it.
“No — nothing, nothing.”
“Nah, c’mon, let’s have it.”
She cringed. “I don’t want to sound insensitive,” she said, a phrase usually belied by what followed it, “but is it really wise for him to be traveling abroad without any potion? He could run into someone. And there’s no way of being sure—”
“It’s not his fault,” Harry said hotly. “It’s not like he can pick some up at the grocer’s—”
“I know that! I do!” Her hands flew up. “I don’t think it’s his fault! He needs help, but we can’t just say that, ‘It’s not his fault,’ like that makes it less dangerous—”
Harry’s hackles sprang up so quickly they ought to have achieved liftoff. “What do you suggest, Hermione? You want to call the Ministry? Ring up Macnair, tell him to get cracking?”
“No!”
“Heel, Potter,” snapped Draco. “She’s the reason your godfather’s not gathering mold in Azkaban.”
“Oi—”
“And another thing. If you’re going to jump down somebody’s throat for the revolutionary suggestion that a werewolf is a creature we should treat carefully, then for God’s sake, jump down mine, because I happen to agree with her.”
Harry was still bristling, as if he had a few more insults in him to trade; Draco, feeling unusually sharp, was more than glad to barter with him. But Ron raised his voice over them all.
“All of you, shut up, would you please,” he said. “Hermione, Lupin went thirteen years without Wolfsbane Potion, and he didn’t hurt anybody—”
“That we know of,” muttered Draco.
“—and Harry, Hermione’s only being cautious. You can’t honestly say he’s not dangerous, alright? Lupin’s a mate, and I like him, but what happened to Daphne was the worst thing I’d ever seen.” He folded his arms. “I still get nightmares, sometimes.”
“So do I,” Hermione said quietly.
Draco stepped forward from instinct, realized that he had no idea what to do, and stopped.
He had nightmares, too. None that he’d ever uttered a word about to anybody. But for a long time after the end of third year, he had taken fright of dreaming, because he knew it would take him back to the Whomping Willow, dementors above and werewolf ahead, only in his dreams, his godfather never came, and the Patronus never worked, and he woke expecting to find a pair of jaws to clamp around his throat.
He hadn’t had the dream since coming to the Burrow. Perhaps his subconscious was so exhausted it had no room left for nightmares, and that was a kind of bliss in itself, because he didn’t know how he would explain cold sweat and tear tracks to the boys he shared a room with.
Hermione was looking at him, waiting for him to say the same, but he couldn’t find the words to admit it. He didn’t want to keep it from her. But he couldn’t make himself say it. The words grew cold on his tongue.
What could he say, anyway? I had a nightmare? Like a child confessing to bedwetting? Ridiculous.
Harry’s anger snuffed out at once, suffocated by concern. “I’m — I’m really sorry. I didn’t think — I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry. How long? All summer?”
“It’s alright,” she said stiffly. “I had trouble sleeping for a while, but my parents got me some sleeping medication. I can mostly do without it, now.”
“Wish I’d had some of that,” said Ron. “I don’t think I slept a wink, that first full moon at home.”
“You, too?” said Hermione softly.
He ground his heel into the hay. “Some.”
Harry became a blur of motion. Before anyone could react he had flung his arms around Hermione and hauled her into a rib-cracking hug. She stifled a squeak into his shoulder and then relaxed, her face squashed into his chest, while he held on as if she was about to float into space without him.
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “Ron, Draco, you too — I never wanted — it’s my fault, I’m sorry—”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll wallop you so hard it’ll make the Willow look like a pat on the bum,” said Ron. “How many times have we got to tell you we’re here because we want to be? It’s been three years. You think any of us would have stuck around if we didn’t think you were worth all the rubbish?”
Harry took a sharp breath.
“Ron,” said Hermione, tremulous with emotion — but tremulous was nothing compared to Harry, who made a sound like a wounded hippogriff, and let go of Hermione to reach for Ron. Ron grabbed him and knocked their heads together, hard, like he was trying to impress the idea through Harry’s stubborn skull with telepathy.
Hermione stepped away from them, blinking suspiciously, and Draco offered his handkerchief. He was not displeased that Harry had seen fit to let go of her; the embrace had been thoughtlessly tight and possibly risked asphyxiation.
“I’m fine,” she said fiercely. “I’ve got terrible allergies.”
“To sentimentality?”
“Yes.”
“One we share,” he said. Then, “While you’ve been at the Burrow—”
“I haven’t had any.” She folded the handkerchief carefully. “Not here. It’s only when I’m alone, that I… and Ginny snores.”
“Yes. Rather.” He paused. “I have some Dreamless Sleep with my effects,” he said. “If you need it, you know where Ronald’s room is.” He didn’t know how else to help. But he was good at potion-making. It was one of the things he could do well, and one of the precious few he could do better than her.
“Thank you,” she said, so softly that it made his stomach curdle nearly inside-out with discomfort, and he ducked his head, muttering that it was only a potion, not a vault of gold.
Then she blew her nose horribly into his handkerchief, and the moment was thankfully over.
When they emerged from the shed, the Weasleys were packing up the tables and chairs and putting out the lights. Tables and chairs drifted through the air like a strange flock of chestnut birds. Molly extinguished all the lanterns in the garden with one swish of her wand, plunging the paddock into soft darkness. Percy and Arthur sat on deck chairs near the stoop, smoking pipes and talking in low voices. The throaty croons of frogs breathed life into the still night air.
“There you are,” cried Molly, catching sight of them. “You really should be in bed, the whole lot of you — you’ll be up at the crack of dawn. Goodness, are any of you packed?”
“I told you we’d do it in the morning,” groused Ron.
“I’ve heard that before,” she said, with exhausted fondness. She ushered them inside, one hand apiece on Ron and Harry’s backs.
As they ducked back into the house, Harry gasped and smacked his hand to his forehead. At first Draco thought he had hit his head on the doorframe, and he snickered at him, but when he saw Harry’s face it was crumpled like a wet dishcloth.
“What, Potter?”
“No bloody idea,” Harry muttered. “It’s been happening all summer, it’s really annoying. I’ll be standing around doing nothing, and suddenly my scar will hurt like hell.”
Which would have tripped something in the back of Draco’s mind, if he had a moment to think about it; but then Molly clucked at them again, and they were being herded upstairs, into that dark warm attic where nothing, from headaches to werewolves, seemed capable of reaching them.
Draco could have sworn he had only been asleep for five minutes when he woke to a soft chime in his ear.
He lifted his head, scrubbing his knuckles into his eyes, and found himself staring into the kindly face of Molly Weasley. The window was dark, and she was lit only by her glowing wand-tip.
“I didn’t want to shake you awake, dear,” she whispered, “since Ron said it gave you a bad reaction.”
Appreciative, embarrassed, and still half-asleep, he coughed and swung his feet off the bed. “I’m up,” he said gruffly.
Around them, dark shapes fumbled around for their clothes. Fred had fallen asleep on George’s shoulder while the other tied his shoes. Harry had his glasses on upside-down.
“Never does that for me,” muttered Ron. “No one asks if I have a bad reaction.”
“That’s because you don’t, Ron, dear. Don’t forget your wellies.”
Downstairs, Mr. Weasley stirred a pot of porridge the size of his ribcage, while Bill pored over a sheaf of parchment tickets at the kitchen table. He was wearing a leather jacket and a brown flannel tied around his waist. He smiled lazily and absently used his wand to stir his coffee-cup as the others stomped in; he shared his father’s remarkable talent for retaining a good temper even in uncomfortable circumstances, e.g., hauling out of bed at the very perineum of dawn.
“Where’re Perce and Ch-a-a-arlie?” said George, failing to stifle a yawn.
“Apparating later today,” said Bill. “All the big kids are.”
“So what are you doing up, then?”
“There’s an all-hands for the Curse Breaking Unit at seven,” he said. “A flag came in last night on a frozen account. Probably nothing. I’m popping in, then Apparating to the campgrounds.”
There were footsteps down the stairs and Hermione and Ginny came into the kitchen, pale and drowsy.
“Sleep well, all of you?” said Arthur, with offensive good cheer, despite the hour. “Ready for a walk? Only a short one — just two miles. Well, two and a half miles, maybe. Between two and three. Four miles, at most.”
“Over-under on six?” Fred mumbled to George.
“Over.”
“Done.”
“Are we going to use that muggle thing in the shed?” Draco said hopefully. “The car?”
“No,” said Arthur hurriedly.
“No,” said Molly, making Arthur jump. She repossessed the spoon and ladled porridge with a dictatorial bent. “All of you, eat quickly. You’ll miss the Portkey.”
Excellent. How he had longed to start his morning off with a crippling bent of nausea.
They scarfed down scalding bowls of porridge and set off through the dark chilly morning. Molly and Bill waved them goodbye from the stoop. Daybreak was a distant blush of green on the horizon.
“So how does everyone get there without muggles noticing?” Hermione wondered, her voice cushioned by the velvety silence of the bullfrogs.
Arthur rubbed his hands. “Good question!” he said, and though Hermione must have heard this at least a dozen times a day, it still made her smirk, a little, in a way that made Draco roll his eyes. “The trouble is, about a hundred thousand wizards turn up at the World Cup. Which is far too many for muggles not to notice! So we have to stagger the arrivals. The tickets come with time gateways and rendezvous points. Some Apparate, of course, but for those who don’t want to, or can’t — that’s you lot — we use Portkeys. There’s about, oh, two hundred of them placed at strategic points around Britain, and ours is on Stoatshead Hill.”
“Why couldn’t we Apparate, too?” complained Ron.
“Side-along! With six people!” Arthur chuckled. “I’d be lucky if I didn’t splinch myself through a wall.”
They trudged down the dark cobbled lane through the village, under the dusty glow of gas lamps. The sky flushed from the color of bottled blue ink to a jeweled indigo, still dusted with stars. Draco kneaded his hands like dough to keep them warm.
Hermione fell back to walk with him. “What goes into making a Portkey?” she whispered.
“No idea, but hang back a moment, I’ll get out my pocket encyclopedia and check — ah, no, it doesn’t say. How the devil should I know?”
“Because you pretend to know everything, up until someone actually asks! You’ll make fun of me for not knowing what a ‘snidgeon’ is, like St. Mungo’s gives you a pamphlet at birth, but other times you’ll act like I’m Merlin’s cursed idiot for supposing an oh-so-superior pureblood wizard would know his way around the world—”
“Alright, alright,” he said, because it was that or break out laughing, and he couldn’t afford to lose the body heat. “Ask your questions, inquisitrix.”
“I just don’t understand what a Portkey is for,” she said in breathy bursts, as they started to climb a long, sloping hill. “If it’s easy as Apparating, why use the Hogwarts Express?”
“Apart from comfort, atmosphere, tradition, and the miscellaneous advantages of not introducing a score of eleven-year-olds to their magical education with a crippling bout of nausea?”
“Quite.”
“The same reason they don’t use Floo powder. Because of you.” He poked her arm, a little meanly.
“Wh— you mean muggle-borns.”
“Yes. You’ve got to have a rendezvous point that muggle parents can find, and you can hardly do better than a big train station smack in the middle of London.”
“That’s… thoughtful.”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I suspect it predates the use of Portkeys, anyway.”
“Is it hard to make a Portkey?” she said thoughtfully. Her head was tipped at the precise angle that meant maximum cognitive activity was taking place; by now, he could have plotted it with a sextant. “Are they very common?”
Any irritation at being treated like an appendix was quelled by a twinge of pleasure that she wanted to ask him instead of anyone else, and in particular Mr. Weasley, who by all rights stood a better chance of knowing. “They’re a poor man’s way to travel,” he said, in a low voice. “They’re one-use objects, cheap to make — how couldn’t they be, it’s only the cost of the object and an enchantment — but not terribly useful, and it takes about an age to set them up. Floo powder is miles better, but it’s expensive.”
“So your family travels by Floo?”
“I side-along Apparate with my mother, seeing as there’s only two of us. But no, we wouldn’t use Portkeys unless there were truly no other options. Dashed uncomfortable things.”
Someone cleared his throat aggressively behind them. Before either could look, Ron brushed past, taking a bruising pace up the steep hill, scowling like someone had canceled his birthday.
“Oh, drat,” sighed Hermione. “I should have thought—”
“Don’t feel badly. I was the one who said it, not you,” said Draco, who was trying not to feel badly about it, either, and finding little success. Which was a damned perplexing feeling, because he’d only said what was true.
All the same, he would have felt more comfortable saying it had he not been living on the Weasleys’ generosity for a week.
At the top of the hill, two tall figures stood silhouetted against the rising sun.
“Amos!” called Arthur gladly. He clasped hands with the older of the two, a ruddy-faced wizard with a receding hairline of brown curls, who was wearing a Hufflepuff varsity jacket.
“Arty! My God, you’ve gotten fat!” This pot, having heartily observed the kettle’s color, proceeded to hug him.
“Easier to do when you’re not eating from the Ministry cafeteria! Children, this is Amos Diggory. Worst chaser Hufflepuff ever had—”
“Least I was a chaser, Arthur ‘Four Strikes’ Weasley—”
“—and my old coworker, used to run with me in Muggle Artifacts. Now he’s in Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?”
“Yes,” said Ginny, at once. Fred smacked her.
Cedric Diggory was the Hufflepuff seeker, several years older, and a pureblood, though his family didn’t run in the Malfoy circles. Up close, he was six feet of lanky quidditch muscle, one of those boys who had shot up so fast he was still growing into his height, with a square face and jaw, waves of tousled toffee-brown hair, and soft brown eyes ringed in long lashes. When he smiled his eyes crinkled and friendly dimples split open his whole face, and it gave the impression that there was no one he would rather be smiling at.
“Hello,” said Ginny, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Hi,” said Cedric, smiling back. Draco, who had been beginning to think Ginny’s taste in boys was an intricate mechanism of self-sabotage, begrudgingly admitted this was improvement.
Amos Diggory peered around at the assembled children: three Weasley boys, Draco, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny. “Great Scott!” he cried, adjusting his glasses. “And you’re still missing some from the Christmas card! You might leave Molly alone, one of these nights, Artie!”
“No, no! Just these ones.” Arthur gestured at Fred, George, and Ron. Draco did not fail to notice that his gesture could have plausibly swept Harry, who was beside Ron, into its ambit. “This is Hermione Granger, friend of Ron’s; Draco Malfoy, another friend; and this is Harry Potter.”
“Harry Potter?” Mr. Diggory’s mouth fell open. “It’s really you?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, reluctantly, “I am. It’s… me.”
“Why, you’re the Gryffindor seeker!”
Harry blinked. “Yeah, I am,” he said, much more eagerly.
“Ced’s told me all about you! He said you were the best seeker in a century! Now, Hufflepuff did beat you last year, I’ll not forget—”
Cedric glanced away, scratching his neck. “Harry was in the Hospital Wing for that match, Dad,” he mumbled. “I told you that.”
“Yes, but you were the man on the broomstick! That’s life, isn’t it, Artie? Just showing up, being there, that’s ninety percent of everything. Ced’s too modest, he takes after his mother — so I’ve got to brag for all three of us!”
“Must be nearly time,” said Arthur quickly. “We’d better get ready… oh. Harry. Hermione. You just need to touch the Portkey, that’s all, a finger will do—”
“Yes, but what is it?” said Draco peevishly. He wasn’t inclined to do much of anything with Amos Diggory, just now, at least until he heard the half-dozen other stories where Gryffindor whomped Hufflepuff flat.
Grinning, Mr. Diggory held out a moldy boot.
Draco sighed. These sorts of developments were starting not to surprise him.
The ten of them crowded around the boot, backpacks jostling. Draco eased out a hand and hooked his pinky around one soggy shoelace.
“Three…” muttered Mr. Weasley, one eye still on his watch.
Draco leaned into Hermione’s ear. “You’re going to want to keep your feet under you, if you can,” he said. “These things generally dump you a few feet in the air.”
She shivered. Any reference to heights or flying was a Granger sleeper-phrase, and triggered her voice to pitch up an octave. “In the air? Why?”
“Two…”
“So you don’t end up teleporting your ankle four feet into solid rock, if their calculations are off.”
She seized his arm. “How far is a few?”
“You’ll soon find out.”
“Draco!”
“One!”
A hook behind his navel wrenched forward, and Draco was moving. Traveling by Portkey was like getting strapped to a giant’s fist and whirled around in a shotput. The boot whirled though a flickering liminal space of flashing colors, moving too fast for him to breathe, centrifugal force straining his arm to its very limit— and then it was over.
He dropped to the ground and landed in a crouch, rolling fluidly to his feet. Harry did the same, looked much cheered by it, and promptly hit the ground when Ron landed on top of him. Hermione dropped out of the air and immediately lurched over, burying her unreasonably sharp nails in Draco’s arm.
“Ow. I said ow, witch. Hello?”
Giving up, he took stock of the other travelers. Mr. Weasley, Mr. Diggory, and Cedric had all landed easily. Fred and George lay in starfish position on the grass.
“Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill,” said a cool, amplified voice. “Welcome to the Quidditch World Cup.”
-Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And just in time to tee up the Cup final. A big quidditch-heavy chapter up next, naturally. Fun fact: I actually did some reading-up on sports journalism to try and nail the writing of the Cup.
-Poor Harry. Also, poor Hermione. I think of Book 4 as the emotional hinge of the series, as conflicts start to flare up — puberty will do that for you, eh — and Feelings become more complicated. (The author wrote, eagerly.)
-BIGGEST shoutout to the comments on the debut chapters, oh my God! Thank you terribly for the warmest of warm welcomes. I can’t wait to share what’s coming.
-Next chapter title: “Ireland vs. Bulgaria.”
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