Chapter 48: The Misfortune of Amos Diggory
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
My dearest, darling, beloved boy,
Mea culpa. Forgive me. I am bad, faithless, and thankless, a low creature of little brains and less heart. If you can find it in your power to absolve me, I will bear the debt of it for ever.
How embarrassing it is to admit, but in a fit of girlish foolishness I stumbled upon a Dark artifact — stall thy hand! Hear my defense! — and mistook it for something far less insidious than it was. Its curse left me paralyzed for a fortnight, capable of doing nothing but singing Pirates of Penzance. Dreadful! I much prefer Yeomen of the Guard! I recovered steadily, thanks to Severus. Never worry for me. I am a Black! Fiercer than wolves, smarter than foxes, and stronger than bulls.
A final recommendation — I know you will detest me for failing to attach reason to directive, but every once in a while, I must exercise a mother’s prerogative to command, while her son is still young enough to listen. Please limit your acquaintance with Alastor Moody. He is a dangerous man, and I fear that his great age has made him volatile and foolish. Severus and I both worry that he will take this chance to grind old axes, and finish the work that he failed to execute during the War.
You ask me what I fear, precisely; I return that I cannot tell you, at least not in print. But that man is no friend to any Malfoy that ever lived, nor any Black, either. He is a creature without loyalties, and without a leash. I leave it at that.
Say hello to all of your little friends for me. I have attached a letter for Theodore; please deliver it to him, if you can.
I love you more than tea and biscuits and silk dresses and the first thaw of winter, young prince of all my kingdoms.
All my heart,
Mummy
It took two readings for suspicion to set in.
Professor Snape had slipped it in with a set of test results from Potions and he had torn it open on the way to Herbology, reading under the desk while everyone else troweled away diligently.
A ridged smear of something rusty colored the side of the seal and the line of the envelope. Narcissa always used the Black seal, which was a crest of three ravens and a skull, impressed on a round of bone-white wax.
He checked the smaller envelope she’d enclosed, but the letter for Theo didn’t have the same mark. She must have sealed it before his, and nicked her finger on the paper. That made sense.
He quashed his unease and pocketed both letters. There was nothing he could do about his mother’s condition from here. Running awry of a Dark artifact wasn’t unlikely, in Malfoy Manor. It did raise questions about what the help was doing, however; maybe he ought to ask Dobby to check on her.
He missed her. He missed her sensibility and her grace and her easy way of making problems disappear with a twitch of her wand or her lip, and the way the world around her was easily sectioned into the good and the distasteful, the elegant and the improper. Perhaps she could even tell him how to make his feelings simple again. She would say something like: Don’t be absurd, Draco, one always goes a bit mad in the winter, but you’ll be yourself again come June. And then the feelings would disappear, and that would be that.
The dry winds of march aired the last of the snows from the rooftops, and a blustery spring gnawed their faces numb each time they poked their heads out of doors. Post was delayed because owls had to batter their way through windstorms. The trees had no sooner sprouted their first green nubbins of hope than the wind cruelly sheared them away. A brown owl with a harrowed, flustered affect landed atop Harry’s egg muffin, seized it, and left in its place a letter from Sirius, which Harry’s expression soon revealed to be a bad trade.
“He’s coming to Hogsmeade.” He threw the letter down, expression stormy. “If he’s caught, I’m going to kill him.”
“Made it so far, though, haven’t they?” said Ron genially. Ever since their reconciliation, he had been remarkably optimistic, and eager to please; he had done his Charms homework a week early, on Hermione’s suggestion, sung Harry’s praises in the Second Task to anyone who could be plausibly accused of asking, and had even complimented Draco’s choice of pocket square that morning. He was, altogether, being a surreally good sport about the whole thing, and it was this that made Draco suspicious; Ron’s turn had been too extreme, and too prompt, for him to think the matter settled.
“Uh oh,” said Ron, squinting at the ceiling. “Incoming.”
The day’s Prophet landed in his outstretched hand, and he unfolded it furtively, hiding it from Harry and Hermione.
“Don’t tell me,” muttered Hermione, hunched over her book. “I don’t want to know.”
Ron scanned it, mouth twisted askew, and then shrugged. “Well,” he said, “it’s not as bad as it could be.”
“Oh, God.”
“I, er… she doesn’t say you’re… Harry’s… girlfriend anymore.”
She grabbed for the paper. Ron whisked it out of hold, but this only brought it into Draco’s reach, who snatched it from his other hand and wrenched it open.
‘HARRY POTTER’S SECRET HEARTACHE,’ declared the headline. He was on the verge of voicing his monumental amusement when he noticed a name several paragraphs beneath it.
…Krum, who is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, has already invited her to visit him in Bulgaria over the summer holidays, and insists that he has ‘never felt this way about any other girl.’ However, it might not be Miss Granger’s doubtful natural charms that have captured these unfortunate boys’ interest…
Draco thrust the offending article back at Ron, nonplussed.
“I’m going to speak to Dumbledore about her,” said Hermione, deadly serious, as if this were on the order of capital punishment. She also didn’t answer him, which made his fingers itch for a wand and something to point it at. “I’m going to get her press pass for the Tournament revoked.”
“On what charges?” Harry said wearily, steering the Prophet away with his fork. “Criminal hearsay?”
“She oughtn’t be allowed on the grounds!”
“She oughtn’t be allowed to hold a quill,” snapped Draco, and shoved away his plate, his appetite lost to bad temper.
The results of the Second Task had failed to improve the atmosphere at Hogwarts one bit. As it became clear that the Tournament would come down to a horse race between two Hogwarts champions, it became more popular to pick a victor, and the choice was not, in anyone’s estimation, altogether difficult. Cassius’ success had infected all of Slytherin with extreme bigness of the head and smugness of the face. Victory made patriots of many a reluctant ombudsman, and green pins and scarves fluttered in the hallways, paired besides ties of yellow and blue, and even once, memorably, of red — though Dennis had been forcibly parted from his delusions about bipartisanship by Ginny Weasley, who unceremoniously ripped it from his chest and punted it in the common-room fire as soon as Harry stepped into the room.
Gryffindor, of course, swore by its underdog — Seamus had started taking public pledges to tattoo Harry’s name on his chest if he won, the proceeds from which went to a fund for the celebration party — but one quarter of a large school, especially when the rest was strongly allied against, could very easily feel like none.
The other schools seemed to find Harry’s second victory in two runs suspicious. Black looks abounded from the passels of blue- and red-clad students. Some of them broke into hissing when he passed. Draco declined to translate some of the things that were said about him in French. Hermione, meanwhile, must have known a bit more of the Bulgarian than she let on, because at one point a group of passing boys from Durmstrang shouted something that made her mutter a Lace-Knotting Jinx over her shoulder.
Over the unmistakable yelp of someone tripping down a flight of stairs, Harry said tiredly: “Bad?”
“I haven’t any idea what you mean,” she sniffed, sweeping a de-linting charm over her sleeve.
“Think that was Peeves,” agreed Ron, and they went into Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Moody had them practicing Counter-Curses. Moody’s curriculum in general leaned more on the spellcasting aspect of Defense than Remus had; where third year had taken them on a tour of Dark creatures, fourth year introduced defending themselves from Dark witches and wizards. It was unclear whether this was curriculum or Moody himself.
Hermione swished her wand out and cast a few warmup jinxes on the table, hexing an inkwell into a mushroom and back again. Draco rolled his wand between his thumb and finger and watched Moody as he mercilessly ripped through Lavender’s weak countercurse, then moved on to Dean.
“You should have hit her,” Draco murmured, and Hermione worked her jaw as if another curse sat inside it.
“Who? Skeeter?”
“Yes. If you’re going to use fear to get what you want—”
“That’s not what I was doing,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“It was, you would, and it was perfectly fine, except you didn’t commit,” he said patiently. “You didn’t scare her, you pissed her off. That’s worse than doing nothing. If you’re going to use fear, use fear, but then you’ve got to keep up the pressure, or no one will take you seriously.”
“You think it would be better if I’d taken her nose off?” she said scornfully.
“Better her hands, it’d stop her from writing. Give her a while to think about whether she wants to risk it again.”
She shook her head and flicked her wand, conjuring bluebell flames that flickered out as soon as she twitched her wrist. She repeated the exercise several times, making the flames dance in small shapes on her wand-tip, like a sparkler.
“It’s funny,” she said distantly. “I wonder if Viktor talked to her.”
“It’s possible. Does Viktor often read Vhitch Vheekly?”
“Don’t be childish.” She spun a ring of flames and rotated it like a lasso, thoughtfully. “But he did ask me to visit him over the summer. Right after he’d pulled me out of the lake.”
“What.”
“It’s odd, isn’t it? I know. We were alone, even you didn’t hear us, and you were standing right there. And she knew about the Yule Ball, even though it didn’t have press. We assumed that Colin was her source, but he didn’t even go.”
“Are you going to Bulgaria?”
“What?”
“You,” he said shortly, “were invited somewhere. Are you going?”
“I — well — frankly, I don’t know. I have lots to do for S.C.R.U.M.B.Y., and I’ll be too busy for much traveling. Then he said he could come visit me, to help—”
He snorted.
“What?” she inquired sharply.
“In muggle London? Viktor Krum?”
“Yes,” she said hotly. “He’s interested in muggle-born rights—”
“Oh, I expect he’s fascinated.”
“And he promised to use his connections to get me in touch with someone in the Wizarding Civil Rights Union.”
“From the goodness of his snow-white heart,” he drawled, and lashed a Freezing Curse at the far wall. It shattered into frost against the window, and startled Neville so badly he toppled over.
“Merlin’s sake. What is it?”
“I would just be careful with what offers you accept.”
“Draco Malfoy, I’m sure you’re not implying what I think you are.”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you he fancies you. Whatever conclusions—”
“He doesn’t fancy me,” she said, shocked, like the idea was intellectual anathema.
He barked a laugh.
“He doesn’t! He just likes to talk to me, that’s all. Most people don’t treat him like a real person. It’s very sad, actually.”
“Which is why took you to the ball. To talk.”
“Yes. Yes, to talk! And you took Daphne, but that doesn’t mean—”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because I’m not interested in Daphne,” he said pointedly, and her flames plummeted, hitting an inkwell. The inkwell exploded.
He examined it with interest. So did several others. Hermione watched the ashes gutter and burn, blinking at them.
“So—”
“Don’t say it.”
He pressed his lips together.
“I did—”
“Don’t say it!”
He glanced at her.
“Are you smiling?”
“Dreadfully sorry, I know you’re allergic,” she said.
He watched her curiously. She twisted up the side of her mouth in that bunched-up smile she did when she couldn’t help it, like she was too full of fondness and it was welling up in her mouth. He made a sound of amusement and tilted his head at her, mirroring her, sort of gently mocking — imitating her, a bit, with the corner of his mouth. To remind her. She went tsss with her teeth in that way that meant you think you’re so funny, and his smirk was a strongly worded yes, and then she was saying— it was tricky, but he could usually get it — it was a close-lipped smile and a line between her brows and a softness around the eyes, which were typically so stern and full of fire, as if to say: You are the most fascinating thing in a world that has magic in it, which was a line he’d thought himself ten seconds ago, looking at her.
And there went the Charms classroom. Pity about it really, lovely space. They’d replace it one of these days.
Mad-Eye’s leg scraped the floor. Hermione pivoted and presented a different kind of I am a forty-year-old career professional in the body of a fifteen-year-old smile, meanwhile Draco contemplated bleakly that fancying her might be the worst thing to happen to his class rank in years. His heart rate was doing him an embarrassment and he was reeling in his thoughts with a fishing net. When Mad-Eye took out his wand, he was actually grateful, because the jolt of anxiety gave him something to steer with.
Staring down the end of the grizzled old auror’s wand was an unwelcome confrontation with mortality that he tried not to let bother him. Moody, for his part, appeared to be having too much fun; he feinted at him three times, cackling every time Draco dodged.
Finally Draco planted one foot behind the other, a duelist’s stance, and he did not flinch, the next time Mad-Eye jerked at him.
“Better,” grunted Mad-Eye. “Stay still. Stop trying to dodge every curse, boy. Just parry them. You’ve got the knack.”
Then he raised his wand.
Draco caught the Reductor at three feet — a bolt of writhing white energy, crackling in midair — and with a sharp wrist movement, he redirected it into the wall. It exploded a small tuft of stone, which Mad-Eye conjured back into place with a flick of his wand.
“Good,” said Mad-Eye approvingly. “Square work. Careful with that refraction, though. They’re faster than diffusing it, but in melee, they’re riskier, and a reckless one could hit one of your friends.”
“I assumed we were dueling,” he muttered, but Mad-Eye had moved on to Hermione.
She held her wand perfectly in front of her eyes, shoulders square, feet apart. The stance was flawless. The countercurse, however, was not: when Mad-Eye feinted, she flinched and took three scrambling steps back. Mad-Eye grunted, shook his head, and finally leveled his wand at her.
When the curse came, she yelped and threw up a Shield Charm that bounced the curse straight back at him.
Mad-Eye squawked, ducked, and the curse soared into a glass paperweight on his desk, which promptly exploded.
A titter of laughter came from the class. Mad-Eye straightened up and glared at her.
“That,” he said, “was not a countercurse, Granger.”
“I know,” she said, in a very small, very high voice. “I know, I know it’s not. I’m sorry. Can I try again?”
“Care to first tell us why you chose not to use a countercurse?”
“I panicked.”
“So we think, girlie. Say more.”
“I panicked, and — and I went for the first spell I knew would work. That I could do.” She lowered her chin.
“That being a Shield Charm.” He used his wand to scratch his eyebrow. “Oi. Brats. Does anyone want to tell Miss Granger why a Shield Charm is a piss-poor idea for close combat?”
Draco flicked up his hand, lazily. No one else did.
“I know why,” she interrupted sharply. Mad-Eye gestured for her to go on. “The Shield Charm has part of a Refractor Curse built into its magical footprint. It reflects everything. If it absorbed all the energy that struck it, the charm would create an enormous energy well for the caster, and eventually it could make them pass out.”
“Very good,” grunted Mad-Eye. “Full marks. Except that reflecting spells leave you liable to do what I just warned Mr. Malfoy against. Hitting your friends. Or, in this case, your teacher.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A countercurse is a defense for close-quarters, precision fighting. Brawling. Not a lot of people appreciate this, because most wizards couldn’t fight a niffler in a paper bag, but brawling takes more precision than dueling. Why? You fumble a dismount, send a curse wide — boom. That’s your lieutenant. Your brother. Your wife. No. A good Shield Charm is what you want on your vanguard. And for what it’s worth, you’ve got a very good Shield Charm, Granger.”
“I… thank you, sir.”
“We’ll do it again,” he barked, and she raised her wand, but her wrist was trembling.
Two more efforts, and she finally caught the white bolt on the tip of her wand, instead of dodging it. It wasn’t as far away as Draco’s had been, but she held it there, her brow shiny with concentration, until the energy winnowed out of sight, and vanished in a crackle of static. When it finished her whole body went slack, and she lurched forward to lean on the desk, sweat beading on her cheeks. Draco cast a quiet Summoning Charm at her chair, and it slid up to nudge her ankle, whereon she summarily collapsed into it.
“Textbook,” muttered Mad-Eye, though it was hard to tell if it was a compliment. “Keep practicing that, Granger. In the field, you won’t get three tries. That’s it, for the rest of you. And I don’t mind if you leave early, so long as you check that corner, Finnigan!”
Seamus, who had been about to sneak out the door, jumped and waved guiltily at the professor. The hour-bell groaned. Harry and Ron waited for Draco and Hermione at the door, both worried and impressed.
“That was a good catch,” Harry told Draco. “You got it farther away than mine.”
“Yeah, but yours was faster, Harry,” said Ron loyally. “Better reaction time. That’s key.”
“I don’t know that it matters,” said Hermione stiffly. “He was going easy on us. In a real duel, he would’ve had all of us down in seconds.”
“No kidding, brains, he’s an auror,” Ron said amicably. “I should hope he can take any one of us, or we’re all doomed.” He turned to Draco. “It was a neat counter, though.”
“Thank you. For the record, diffusing a curse is a waste of energy,” Draco muttered, as they rounded the landing beneath the D.A.D.A. classroom. A wide, spacious atrium lay between theirs and the grand staircase, with a set of windows overlooking the Transfiguration Quad, and students milled around, chatting, to fill the passing period. “In a duel, you’ve got seconds to respond to every opening. Refracting a curse saves the effort of casting your own. I was being efficient.”
“Which you know, since you’ve been in so many duels,” said Ron.
“I might have. You don’t know how I spend my summers.” There was a book on it in the Manor library, but Ron didn’t need to know that. The book had been rather old, anyway; its focused on traditional pureblood honor duels, not freeform fights for survival. It was possible some of the advice was out of date.
“I wish they let us join Dueling Club as fourth years,” said Hermione suddenly. “I would’ve liked to know something about it, before I had to do it in front of everyone.”
Draco side-eyed her. She’d never shown much curiosity about dueling before. It wasn’t her style of magic; it was fast, instinctive, and required more than a modicum of hand-eye coordination. “Contemplating a career as an auror?”
“No, but — I mean, it’s helpful to know, and it’s not like we haven’t been in magical fights before — wouldn’t you like to know these things? Preferably before we’re having jinxes thrown at us willy-nilly?”
“Are you sure you’d have time?” said Ron. “Even with Scrumpy?”
“It’s S.C.R.U.M.B.Y.!”
“Sorry! Sorry. Right. Got it.”
“Maybe if you shortened the acronym, you’d save enough time for another club,” said Harry.
She huffed in irritation.
“Granger, why did you want to d—”
Someone shouted. A surge of movement from the center of the atrium sent students scattering like water displaced by a stone. Red lights flared from the center of the crowd, the sign of magic, and someone roared.
Draco cast a Buffering Charm and shoved through the crowd, which was wrestling past him to get in the opposite direction.
A circle yawned in the center of the atrium, where Marcus Flint was squalling on the floor with Neil Macdonald, who’d hooked his elbow around the bigger boy’s throat in the most textbook headlock of all time. It was almost embarrassing. Neil lacked four inches and at least a stone of Flint’s girth, but he was hauling him around like a puppet on strings.
“TAKE IT BACK! You lying, trollsucking shit, take it back—”
“GERROFF,” howled Flint, scrabbling at the arm on his throat. “G’RROFF ME—”
Neil hauled him up, and with a mighty flip, threw him onto the floor. Flint went sprawling. Now with both hands freed, Neil lunged for his wand, which had been knocked astray. Flint did the same, but Neil was faster.
He whirled on Flint — BANG! — and a blast of white light filled the hall.
Draco threw an arm across Hermione and hauled them both around as the light momentarily blinded them. In the bleary blinking that followed, there was only one boy in the circle; and he dangled from his fingers the squealing, writhing body of a garden snake.
Hermione shoved her head under Draco’s arm, peering into the circle, and gasped. “Is that — is that Flint?”
“One suspects,” said Draco, queasily, as Neil levitated the thrashing snake up and down on his wandtip, then bounced him forcefully across the stones like a coil of wire. Chill echoes of uneasy laughter erupted from the crowd around them, mostly Hufflepuffs, who failed to show much dismay at their fellow student’s misfortune; whatever Flint had said to Neil must have been remarkably bad.
“Full human,” said Ron wondrously. “I’ve never seen McGonagall do that.”
“Because it’s illegal,” snapped Hermione. “You can’t use involuntary transfiguration on another subject, wizards have gone to prison for less.”
“Good,” said Harry firmly, “it’ll build character.”
“Harry!”
“What? Flint’s a git, and I’m not sorry it’s come back to him.”
“Flint? Who cares about him?” she demanded, and Draco blinked in pleasant surprise. Harry, too, seemed startled by her vehemence. “He’ll be fine! Or he won’t be! But Daphne nearly got thrown out for being mean to Millie Bulstrode, and she’s a pureblood! Neil could get himself expelled!”
“You didn’t hear what he said to him,” said a low, sullen voice. Hermione jumped, and Susan Bones appeared at her elbow, her plump jaw set in stubborn satisfaction. For a girl whose face was usually slack and jolly, this was a strange new expression, and not one that set Draco at ease.
“Oh! Susan,” Hermione said, pressing a hand to her chest. “I didn’t see you. What — what did he say, if you don’t mind?”
Susan gave her a disgruntled look, as if unable to tell if she was serious; and then turned to stare coldly at the scene unfolding before them.
“Amos Diggory lost his job this morning,” she said.
“What?”
“What?” said Ron loudly. “Old Amos? You’re kidding!”
“My aunt told me,” she said slowly. “They fired her, too, but she knew it was coming for a long time now. She was a Fudge appointee. It was just a matter of time.”
Her mouth held the words in a strange, brittle way, tinged with a cynicism that she couldn’t quite sell. They weren’t her words, but someone else’s, someone older’s, and she clearly didn’t believe them.
“I don’t suppose your aunt gave a reason,” said Draco.
Susan gave him a plaintive, piercing look. “Unprofessional conduct,” she said. “At least, that’s what they said for Diggory. They just said my aunt was a security risk.”
“Security?” demanded Ron. “Bones has been head of Law Enforcement for ages, what’s the risk?”
“There isn’t one,” snapped Susan. “She’s a brilliant Secretary. And she was always loyal to the Ministry, she kept working for them even after Runcorn won and everyone told her to quit— but—”
“But what?”
“But my dad’s a muggle,” she said.
Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed: “STEP ON HIM!”
Another billow came from the crowd. A crest of gold hair appeared over the forest of dark heads, and a prefect badge glimmered through the sea of robes — Draco felt a whisper of hope that it was Cedric, come to set his boy straight — but this was a gravely misplaced hope. A group of Slytherins swelled out of the crowd, bound in packs, as it always seemed they were, these days — among them Theo, Pansy, Daphne, and the sneering blond idol of the Hogwarts Head Boy.
“Oh, Merlin,” said Theo, massaging his eyes.
“Bloody hell,” said Pansy, eager.
Cassius Warrington gripped a pair of first years by the hair, wrenched them apart, and swept between them into the circle. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Just what the hell sort of situation do we have here, anyway?”
“Remedial etiquette,” said Neil casually, whipping Flint to and fro like a riding crop.
“Remedial—? Is that a student?”
“Technically, right now, he’s your closest genetic relative,” said Neil.
Warrington’s jaw dropped. He lagged for an understandable beat of astonishment; and when he recovered, he snapped, “Twen—th— fifty points from Hufflepuff! For inappropriate use of magic! And if you don’t put him back on the count of three, I’ll take another fifty! One; two—”
Neil’s eyes glittered. “Take them.”
Susan whistled in approval. A cluster of Hufflepuffs roared, signifying their consent to this sacrifice.
“Cass,” said Theo, blinking tiredly, “leave it, would you? Let’s go get Snape.”
“Nott, I’ll be about my business, and you go be about yours,” he snapped, which made Theo scowl. “I don’t question you about your obligations. Now. Macdonald, set him to rights, and we’ll handle this like gentlemen.”
“See, Cass, but that depends,” said Neil, “on your interpretation of ‘rights.’ For instance: I would say he’s found his calling.”
“Another fifty, then,” said Warrington, coldly, “and a month of detentions for you — with Snape, so don’t get any ideas about watering flowers with that pansy of a house-head you’ve got. And I’ll be having a word with Dumbledore. And my father. And put him down.”
Neil kissed his teeth. “As you like,” he said, and then wrenched his wand high into the air.
The snake soared. It just missed the arm of the chandelier, and before it could return to earth, Neil flicked his wand, and another BANG! filled the chamber. Flint sprang into being somewhere around the chandelier, and then hurtled back to earth, roaring, while the crowd erupted in screams and peeled apart.
Draco was rocked back on his feet. He groped for a handhold and found one on Hermione’s shoulder, who stood her ground and drove her elbow hard into a fleeing Ravenclaw — shoved her way through the crowd, sprinted into the center, and flung her wand high, crying: “Wingardium leviosa!”
Blue blossomed from the outstretched limb of her wand, flowering up her arm and crystalizing around the tip of her wand. Fingers of ghostly light rose and caught Flint in a perfectly symmetrical net of hexagons. The spell snapped him up just in time to whisk him over the heads of the crowd — sweeping his shadow precariously over Neil, Cassius, Theo, and Pansy, who had all dropped to their knees. Theo had thrown himself across Pansy like a human shield, though needlessly, because Hermione’s net buoyed Flint gently and carefully to the ground, where he dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, shuddering.
Hermione turned, her wand still gleaming faintly blue, and breathed shakily, wiping away a spray of sweat-damp curls that had sprung loose from their clip. She glowed slightly with the fear and exertion of the magic, and her collar had been rumpled slightly in the crowd, with sweat jeweling her temples, but her eyes were narrow and sharp and focused, and she was just — incredibly good. It was a spell even Draco couldn’t have managed, not that strong, not on a weight like Flint’s, with the force of gravity bearing down on it. He’d known it before, but — there was a difference between knowing and seeing.
“What?” she breathed, and he looked sharply away.
Neil planted his boot on Flint’s shoulder and pushed. “You see that?” he said. “That’s Hermione Granger. She saved you. Say thank you, twat.”
“Stop that,” she said. “Neil. That’s not—”
Flint rolled upright, utterly wrecked: his hair askew, blood dribbling from each nostril, and a glaze of bloody, unseeing hatred painted across his ugly face. “How dare you,” he rasped.
“Cass.” Theo stepped into the circle, reaching for Warrington’s elbow. “Cooler heads, lad. Pans, get Flint—”
“Hell do you want me to do, levitate him? I can’t manage a Leviosa that strong.”
“How dare I?” Neil said pleasantly. “Hurting you doesn’t take half the daring you seem to think it does, friend. You were always piss at spellwork.”
But Flint wasn’t looking at Neil. Neil didn’t seem to exist to him. The black inkpots of his beady eyes, crusted with red, swiveled and tightened on Hermione, who took a startled step back.
“Pans,” said Theo flatly. He shouldered past Warrington, fumbling for his wand. “Now—”
“Now what?”
Flint lifted his chin with awful dignity. “I don’t need your stolen magic, mudblood.”
And he lifted his wand at Hermione.
And several things happened more or less at once. For one: Daphne let out a bloodcurdling scream which appeared to come from a different body altogether. For two: Theo roared, and lunged for Flint, reaching for his outstretched wand-arm.
For three: Draco ripped out his wand and executed the most flawless Bombarda since Filius Flitwick took his Board Exams.
Flint shot into the wall. Crack, skull on stone, a horrible sound. Draco stalked forward, shaking out his wand-hand, and the Impedimenta caught Flint in the stomach. He slowed like he’d dropped into tar. The third spell was a jinx Flitwick never taught, and for good reason: a lash of his hand fused Flint’s teeth together into a seamless plate of cartilage. Flint screamed, but the sound was arrested by the smooth grill covering his throat.
There was screaming. The crowd broke into chaos. The circle snapped closed in a dead crush of fleeing students and someone was hauling on his arm but he shook them off and wrenched his wand back up at Flint. A spell shot past his head from behind — flickers of magic threaded the riot behind him — and he dodged, swiveling away from the immobilized boy. He shot a point-blank Petrificus Totalus at Warrington’s head, which toppled the boy like a felled redwood. When he spun around on his heel there was another Slytherin — one of Flint’s friends, a chaser — Stupefy — another one — Impedimenta — and he was still whirling, so he used the momentum to send another Petrificus at Flint, for good measure, and it was strange, but there was a rhythm to it, like racing, like flying, like the best games of quidditch — jinx, parry, jinx, a dance in three-four time.
He couldn’t see Hermione. She had vanished into the uproar. His pulse was warm and fast in his temples, and he could hear it rapping out the beat of a skirmish, the swift twostep of charm and countercharm.
Where was she? She wasn’t that tall. A body crush would sweep her under like a riptide. She could get trampled. He should have moved her.
He lifted his wand, but then a thunderclap split the air, and everything froze.
It was like time had stopped. He could feel his body, but couldn’t move it. The air slowed and stilled like tar. Even the jinxes flying overhead slowed and fizzled out.
The high and furious brogue of Professor McGonagall split the newfound silence.
“What is the meaning of this?”
She swept down the staircase like Michael descending from the clouds, her robes billowing, her wand sweeping across the whole tumultuous assembly, as if she couldn’t decide where to point it first. Mad-Eye Moody hobbled a few paces behind her, jaw set grimly. “What is going on?” she bellowed. “Who is responsible?”
The freeze broke. The crowd collapsed, most people dropping to their knees at the sudden reintroduction of gravity; Draco was among the first to stagger upright, followed swiftly by Theo, who had swept Pansy under his arm. Draco swept the crowd with his eyes and found Hermione hunkered near a gargoyle with Neil, Harry, and Ron, protected by a pair of glittering and electrically bright Shield Charms. As McGonagall thundered down the stairs, Hermione flickered one of the charms out, met Draco’s eye, and gave a little nod of reassurance; he nodded back jerkily, and hoped that the deep unclenching of relief in his stomach did not otherwise reveal itself.
She was fine. And he was an idiot, for worrying.
Flint was making sounds that would have been shrieks if he could sieve air through the smooth plate in his mouth, and struggling in ways that would have been violent if he could move. Irritably, Draco snapped his wand behind him and muttered a Silencing Charm.
“Malfoy!”
Damn.
McGonagall swept down on him, and palpably staggered back when she saw Flint. “Did you — could you — who did that?”
She hauled Flint up by his collar, jabbed her wand at his mouth, and unsealed his teeth with a silent spell. Flint gasped for air like a drowning fish.
He shoved free of McGonagall and tore off down the hallway.
“Flint! Come back here!”
“Want me to get him?” offered Mad-Eye. He fingered his wand longingly.
“No, Alastor. You stay. Malfoy — don’t think I didn’t see that Silencing Charm, you’ll be coming with me—”
Mad-Eye snorted. Draco glanced at him, and Mad-Eye returned a cool, cryptic stare that made him wonder if perhaps the Defense professor had seen more than he let on.
“And Warrington, as for you — Warrington? Oh, wonderful! Our Head Boy is petrified. How useful.” McGonagall’s diagnostic spell glittered over his face and dissipated. “At least it’s not worse,” she said tightly. “Poppy can deal with the superficialities. Potter! Weasley! Granger! I don’t suppose any of you can point me to the perpetrators?”
Harry and Ron offered her identical good-natured shrugs of the un-snitching, and she sighed.
“Am I right in assuming all three of you have suffered an errant episode of acute collective blindness?”
“Sorry,” offered Harry. She waved him off, too exasperated to speak.
“At the risk of stating the obvious, professor, it was a riot,” said Theo calmly, tucking his wand back into his robes. “No one saw who cast the first spells.”
Pansy cleared her throat, which turned into a yelp, for Theo had elbowed her. He caught Draco’s eye and tilted his head. Draco nodded back.
“You seen many riots, boy?” Mad-Eye remarked.
“Pleased to say not many, sir.”
He grunted. “Thought so. Well, take it from one who’s seen plenty: they’re not spontaneously occurring phenomena.”
Neil said, “It was my fault, sir.”
He stood up straight, nursing a long bruise spanning the length of his jaw. The rind of purpled skin failed to quell his calm aura of triumph.
Mad-Eye’s tongue probed his cheek thoughtfully. “Alright,” he said, at length. “How?”
“I jinxed Marcus Flint. He called Cedric Diggory a word I’m not going to repeat, so I turned him into a garter snake,” said Neil calmly. “I know that’s against the rules. I’m sorry. If you want me to talk to Dumbledore, I’m happy to do that. But professor, let me just say, it was a cracking good piece of human transfiguration, and if you’re going to expel me, you should at least let me sit the N.E.W.T. first.”
McGonagall covered her face in her hands. Mad-Eye barked a harsh laugh, sobering when McGonagall glared at him.
“We do not condone human transfiguration on other students,” she spat, “or any wizards, ever, no matter what was said to you, Mr. Macdonald.”
“I know, professor.”
“You may very well face serious disciplinary consequences for this, I hope you realize. Pomona will be horrified; your parents, of course, will be informed. Do you understand? Are you taking this seriously?”
Neil rubbed his jaw. “Yes, professor, very much. And I’m sure they’ll want to know about it, if only because — well—”
“What? Spit it out!”
“The jinx was my mum’s idea,” he admitted.
McGonagall turned around and walked away to the foot of the stairs. Mad-Eye was giggling to himself.
“Yes! I expect it was! I will be writing a long letter to Miss Mary Macdonald, explaining that the rules of Hogwarts Castle have not changed since she was enrolled, nor have the standards of her house wavered such that I am any less disappointed in her— do you find this amusing, Alastor?”
“Bit,” admitted Mad-Eye.
“It isn’t!”
Neil began to grin, tentatively; abruptly, Mad-Eye snarled at him. “What’s so funny? Think it’s a joke, boy?”
“N-no—”
“Think that punishment is funny, do you? Want me to give it a go? Think you’ll find it funny, then?”
“N-n-no, sir.”
“That’s right.” He pulled back, sneering. “Malfoy. Nott. Parkinson. You’re coming with me to Dumbledore’s office.”
“Sir?” said Theo, like he’d been clubbed.
“Why me?” demanded Pansy. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Alastor,” said McGonagall, impatiently, but Mad-Eye flicked his fingers at her.
“Clean it up, Minnie. I’ll sort them out.”
She rolled her eyes and swept off, muttering. Mad-Eye jerked his head at the stairs and started his slow, lilting ascent, without waiting to see if they followed. Trading a dismal look, Theo and Pansy followed him, lifting their chins in similar angles of snobbish objection.
Draco tucked his wand away and picked his way through the quiet hall. He felt a pressure on the back of his neck. He turned his head, and caught Hermione staring from across the atrium.
She didn’t seem to realize she’d been caught; she was watching him distantly, with the warm curious pressure of a scientific examination, like her mind was operating at an altitude several thousand leagues above her body. Her eyes flickered down to his shoes and up again, and a shiver ran down his back.
He wanted to demand what she was about, but Moody was fast leaving, and Harry and Ron were calling her away to help with Warrington.
Hermione tilted her head, her lips just so slightly parted. He raised his eyebrows at her, a bit defiantly.
She wet her lip and blinked twice, and he watched as some cognitive instrument visibly reset itself. She jerked away, and hurried after Harry and Ron.
He wondered if he’d frightened her.
The weight of her gaze could have suffocated him. He wasn’t sorry for jinxing Flint — it had happened and there was no use regretting it, even if he had gone further than the situation merited — but he did worry that she might not see it the same way. She might begin to think he was the kind of person who couldn’t control his impulses. He could control his impulses. He just hadn’t felt like controlling that one. Marcus Flint was a savage person and whatever he would have done to her would have been worse than what Draco did to him.
Or maybe it wouldn’t have been. Draco found, refreshingly, that he didn’t care. He only cared if Hermione thought differently because of it. Which would — frankly speaking — make her something of a hypocrite, because she had used aggressive magic on people before, and she never seemed too hesitant about Stunning people last year. But then, he hadn’t Stunned Flint, had he? He’d chosen a jinx for pain.
She mightn’t like that. Might be that it tested one of those iron scaffolds of moral compunction. He twitched, sullen and restless, and stalked the rest of the way to Dumbledore’s office.
The headmaster’s suite stood behind an eight-foot statue of a griffin, its wings cupped around the sharp double-helix of the stairs.He climbed them. A faint draft jingled lonesomely through the high atria of this part of the castle. A door of shining cherry wood explained by way of gold placard that behind it lay ALBUS DUMBLEDORE, HEADMASTER, and it sat ajar. Inside the office, it felt like he had stepped abruptly into another time of day, and another time in history: ribbed marble pillars twined up to the dark stone vault of the ceiling, while row upon row of big dark oil portraits formed a conference of stone-faced observers who kept a silent and haughty watch over the room. Silk-shaded lamps burned low, and around the room a host of magical instruments — sextants, Sneakoscopes, cauldrons, crystal balls — hovered in magical suspension, drifting around the ceiling like a host of glittering silver planets. At the back of the room sat a vaulted platform upon which sat a very old harp, a very old mirror, and on the shelf above it, a very, very old hat. A wide rip in the brim evoked a mouth. Draco had worn it once, a century ago.
Beneath the podium rested a titanic claw-foot desk, encircled by plush red armchairs, and in two of these slouched Theo and Pansy. Moody presided, at left, pouring tea into blue china cups on a silver tray. It must have been Dumbledore’s, but the headmaster himself was nowhere to be found.
Predictably, Theo was complaining. Draco shut the door with his heel and leaned against it, listening.
“…going to be done soon? Not to be a brat, but we’ve other things to do today.”
“Yes, and I will be a brat, if he won’t,” said Pansy. “I’ll have you know we’ve another obligation—”
“Got a meeting to make, have you?” growled Mad-Eye. That shut both of them up. “Worried the League won’t make do without you? Oh, I know all about that,” he added meanly, when Theo twitched. “I know what you two have been up to, scuttling around the dungeons. There’s not a thing that goes on in this castle Dumbledore doesn’t know about, including your little social club. I told him to get rid of it, but he picks his battles, does Albus.”
“Sir—”
“But never think,” he boomed, leaning over the table, “that picking his battles means he’s taken his eye off the fight. If he’s not picked your battle, it means it doesn’t matter if you win it. You understand?”
Theo blinked. “Not in the least,” he said. “Does Professor Dumbledore oppose the League of Promising Youth, sir? I thought he supported adolescents developing political connec—”
“Don’t play dumb with me, boy.”
The table rattled. Theo jumped, nearly spilling his chair, and Pansy seized her wand.
“Smarter men than you haven’t fooled me,” snarled the auror. “Far smarter, and far shorter-lived. You think we don’t know what you’re doing down there? I lived through the Wizarding War. I was a general before you were a notion in your father’s head. Don’t think your age will spare you, either. Maybe it will — if it’s Dumbledore. Maybe, maybe , if it’s Snape. But not if it’s me. I’ve seen soldiers younger than you, boy, I’ve fought with them. And against them. Regulus Black took the Mark when he was fifteen. Evan Rosier: sixteen. Barty Crouch—”
“Sir—”
“All dead!”
“Sir,” said Theo calmly, “Mr. Crouch is alive and well. In fact, I spoke to him at the Second Task. And I can quite assure you, it would be the shock of my young life to find he had the Mark.”
“I don’t mean Barty. He’d have hunted the Death Eaters until they ground his limbs to dust, and even then, his ashes would chase them across the world.” His tone, in describing the unerring bloodlust of his embittered old colleague, was the closest Draco had ever heard the grizzled professor come to affection. “No. His son. Junior.” He drummed his fingers restlessly on the wandhilt. “My godson,” he said quietly.
Draco jerked, and knocked his elbow into a silver sextant. It ceased hovering and clattered to the floor, loudly, making Theo and Pansy whirl around. Mad-Eye did not move; his only reaction was a minute swivel of his glass eye. He must have known that Draco was there.
“Good of you to join us,” he grunted, and reached for the teapot. “Tea, Malfoy?”
“No, thank you.”
He poured one anyway.
“He named you godfather?” demanded Pansy. “Good Lord, why?”
Mad-Eye made a series of rasping grunts, like a knife scraping the rough edge of a plate. It took a moment to realize that he was chuckling.
“Don’t let it surprise you. I was green back then, and we’d been together since auror training.”
“You were aurors together?”
“Fastest rise the Ministry ever saw,” he grunted. “Most arrests in a year. Most convictions, too, though that was all Barty. I was a wreck on the stand, I couldn’t nearly ever get the jurors to listen to me, but when he spoke, a courtroom did what he said. He could sell water to merfolk. And he was good. Never broke a rule, and it wasn’t like there weren’t chances. ‘By the book, or not at all.’ Probably why the courts loved him. And he trusted me more than anybody. No one better to keep his boy safe.”
“Well, that didn’t work out,” said Pansy.
Mad-Eye slowly turned his head toward her, like an owl. Theo made a fearful noise, glancing between the two of them, and his hand shifted toward his wand-pocket.
Then Mad-Eye threw back his head and laughed. Pansy smirked.
“No. Can’t say fairer than that. It didn’t.”
“How did he die?” she demanded. “Did you do it?”
“Pans,” exclaimed Theo.
“Oh, shut up, Teddy, they’re only questions. He doesn’t have to answer them. Was it you, professor? Or his father? Was it a battle? The Killing Curse? Did he get tortured? Or—”
“Severus Snape,” said Mad-Eye. “He’s how.”
Draco recoiled. The glass eye slid in his direction, and Mad-Eye’s mouth twitched up.
“Don’t like that, do you, Malfoy?” he said. “Of course you don’t. Snape’s your godfather, isn’t he? Expect I’d be nervous, in your position. Well, don’t be. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye.”
His fingers drummed on his wand-hilt.
“…Thank you for the reassurance, sir.”
“Professor Snape killed Barty Crouch?” said Pansy, rapturously. She sounded like the mental image of her Head of House committing murder was the highlight of her day.
Mad-Eye jerked his head. “No. Not that simple. When Snape turned coat — after the Potters died, when the war was ending — he brought names. Junior was the biggest. He and Black — but Black had disappeared, by then, he wasn’t around to hunt, and wouldn’t have been much danger if he was. It was Crouch and Rosier. They’d gone after the Longbottoms. We hunted him down, rounded him up. Barty himself presided, at the trial, and goddamn if Dumbledore didn’t pitch a fit over that — but I told him, you’ve got to let him. And he pulled through, did Barty. Sent his kid straight to Azkaban, two life sentences, no parole. The jurors wanted just one, but it was Barty who said no. He said two. One for Frank,” he added, with nearly imperceptible softening, “and one for Alice.”
Pansy buried her chin in her palm, enrapt. “That’s awful,” she said, admiringly.
“Awful,” agreed Mad-Eye, “but right. And necessary. Sometimes they all sleep in the same bed.”
“I know,” she said.
He cocked his head at her. She shrugged. Theo’s hands wrestled together like mating snakes, though his face revealed nothing but polite boredom.
“He died in Azkaban,” said Mad-Eye. “Crouch. And Rosier. But he died. Picked a fight, got his head bashed in. Dead. Probably suicide, if you want my theory. Happened the same day they caught the Lestranges — reckon he heard about it, and figured the war was over. Nothing left to live for.”
“Oh,” said Pansy, disappointed. “That’s boring.”
“That’s death,” said Mad-Eye, with a grim leer. “Boring as it comes, girlie.”
“The day they caught the Lestranges,” repeated Theo, frowning. “But that — I’m sorry, correct my memory, professor, but that was a while after the war, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t that be around—”
“August, 1988,” said Draco quietly. Three pairs of eyes settled on him. But that was when they had caught Bellatrix. He remembered because his mother hadn’t left her room for a week.
“Aye,” said Mad-Eye, softer than he’d ever been. “A bit later than. Near the end of the summer. Tracked them from Witherfell — took us a damn long time, too. Didn’t help that Travers kept sniffing around the department, throwing red herrings, probably trying to get his job back—”
“When you say ‘us,’ do you mean you and Crouch, sir?”
“No. He was gone by then.” Mad-Eye folded his arms.
“They fired him?” Pansy was indignant.
“Fired him?” croaked Mad-Eye, indignantly. “Barty, who knew that office better than his own wand-arm? No. He knew they couldn’t keep him after what happened to Junior. You can’t have a man like that on the force, bad for cohesion, bad for morale, and he knew it. He resigned, and Fudge was grateful enough to give him another post in International Cooperation — a desk job, but he’d get to work with the Wizengamot, like he always wanted. Only kind thing Fudge ever did for him, too, because if they’d made him leave his next job would’ve been a tall glass of Living Death. My next partner was Kingsley.”
Theo sat up. “Shacklebolt?”
“You’re familiar,” said Mad-Eye, pleased.
“Yes. I mean, I’ve heard of him. He’s on the Wizengamot, now, isn’t he? My father—”
“Hates him. Yes.”
“I — w– sir, my father respects everyone he works with—”
“I told you not to lie,” snapped Mad-Eye. “He hates him, and believe me, the feeling’s mutual. Sibelius Nott was one of the worst men I ever met, and if that offends you, I can give you a list of reasons that’d make your toes curl.”
Theo smiled without teeth. “Respectfully, sir, I doubt you could surprise me.”
“Respectfully, boy,” said Mad-Eye, “I reckon I could.”
There was a beat.
“I got him, you know,” he added. Mad-Eye leered, warping the scars on his face into grizzled new constellations. “I had him. Had him. If I’d been half the man Barty was on the stand, he’d have been in Azkaban right now. He’s a shit duelist, your father.”
“I’ll tell him you said so.”
“Do that.”
This time, Theo showed his teeth when he smiled.
The door rattled. Another twist, and it swung open, admitted a pair of figures whose silhouettes, it seemed to Draco, had never been more diametrically opposed: one tall, imposing, graced with a fount of white hair and beard, and the other short, lanky, and dark, buried in a volume of black robes. Dumbledore and Snape came in on the heels of a cold whisper of air, their robes stirred, the wind’s touch lingering in their hair, as if they had hurried in from a run about the grounds.
Draco sat up straight, his posture reverting to propriety at the sight of Snape. He itched to ask him about his mother’s letter — its inconsistencies, the stain, the fact that she’d been injured and neither she nor Snape had even bloody told him — but Snape’s eyes slipped over him without purchase, as if he were one more part of the furniture, and fixed on Mad-Eye.
“Marcus Flint has contacted his parents,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Professor McGonagall is with him. Poppy reports no evidence of lasting injury.”
“Maybe next time.”
“It was our profound good luck that Minerva intervened when she did,” snarled Snape. “It is our fathomless luck that his parents appear disinclined to press charges, and Mr. Macdonald should go down on his knees before his better angels that no lasting harm was done, so the Ministry will not have yet more cause to surveil us—”
“Piss off, Severus, the boy’s not connected. Ask him.” Mad-Eye nudged Theo, who jumped.
“I — I couldn’t possibly comment,” he spluttered. “I’m not — particularly familiar with Marcus’s family—”
“And that just says it all, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Snape surged at Mad-Eye, who stood his ground, uninterested and unfazed. For a moment, Draco was shockingly certain he was going to hit him, but the Potions Master heeled at the last moment, and stabbed a finger in his face instead. “Do you think the Commission will care whether the boy was rich or not? We face Ministry audit as it is—”
“Pipe down,” said Mad-Eye coolly, and placed his hand on his wand-hilt. Theo shifted his leg in front of Pansy.
“Thank you, Severus,” interrupted Dumbledore. “I appreciate your passion in defending this school from everyone, including its teachers. However, I must ask you not to shout at Professor Moody within reach of young ears, or mine.”
“Ministry audit,” muttered Mad-Eye. “God forbid we get a blessed Ministry audit. What if the quill inventory doesn’t add up?”
“I am not surprised you fail to take this seriously. Those of us who have been teaching for years, however—”
“Hark at him, trying to pull rank,” said Mad-Eye, with impressment. “Adorable. Look around you, Snape. How many Ministry men have been on the grounds since September? Do you think we’re free as birds? Do you think it’s easy for Albus to run this school with a puppetmaster’s hand up his—”
“Alastor,” said Dumbledore. “The children.”
Pansy let out a high nervous giggle. Snape was turning a color Draco had previously seen only in root vegetables.
“You question my credibility? You lock yourself in your tower every time he sets foot on the grounds,” he snapped. “You run from Crouch like a child from chastisement. You, who have taken emeritus duties for fourteen years, retreated to your hidey-holes and your paranoia, while some of us have continued to serve—”
“Some of us were plum short of other options, besides Azkaban,” said Mad-Eye comfortably, his eye glittering. “It’s rich of you to expect gratitude, Severus. And the next time you accuse me of ‘hiding,’ I’ll take it as a warm invitation to discuss your whereabouts on a certain thirty-first of October.”
From his tone he clearly expected this to be a brutal hit; but Snape’s face hardened into a gleaming sheet of malice, and he said crisply, “Better absent than holding the knife, don’t you think, Alastor?”
Mad-Eye gave a hard jerk. He stepped forward— and Dumbledore said, “Enough.”
It was the kind of word that could quell an avalanche. Both professors stepped apart, abruptly, and Draco hauled his mouth shut.
Dumbledore turned and smiled at Draco. “Hello, Mr. Malfoy; Mr. Nott; Ms. Parkinson. I apologize for the disruption in your schedules, and for my own tardiness in particular. I trust Professor Moody has had more than enough time to perform an inquisition. I see no reason to waste more of your time with my repetition of the same. Professor Snape will escort you and Mr. Nott back to Slytherin, and I will tarry here a while with Mr. Malfoy, before I return him to his own dwelling.”
“What do you want with Draco?” snarled Pansy, and Draco was faintly touched that she bothered. “He didn’t see any more than we did.”
“I believe you. But I would like to speak to Draco about other matters. Severus—?”
“Come,” snapped Snape, and Theo and Pansy shot up. Draco rose, too, and caught Theo as he was going to leave.
“Here’s this,” he muttered, passing along Narcissa’s letter. “From my mother.”
A glimpse of strange, intense relief passed over him. He tucked it carefully into his breast pocket, straightened his lapel, and then swept out, along with Pansy, Snape, and Mad-Eye, who sent Draco a queer look and then shut the door behind them.
In the empty office, the instruments tinkled and clicked softly overhead, like an orchestra of wind chimes. Dumbledore eased himself into the chair behind the desk and reached for a cup of tea. He wrapped his wizened fingers around it and gazed pensively into its depths, as though he had forgotten anyone else was there.
By and by, Draco began to fear for the rest of his evening.
“You wanted to speak to me, professor.”
“Hm?”
“…About the fight.”
“Oh — yes. I am sure that Mr. Flint will have a great deal to say to the Ministry, when all is said and done, and it will be none too pleasant for me; but it will, at least, give me all the information I require. Your testimony, though certainly appreciated if you would prefer to give it, is not necessary.”
“…Alright.” He leaned back, skeptical. “Then why am I here?”
Dumbledore delicately rested his saucer back on the desk, and adjusted the teacup to sit at a precise angle. The tiny click of china filled the room. The headmaster’s expression was complex, closed, and deeply old.
“I am sorry for the question I am about to ask you,” he said. “You have every right to refuse to answer it, on any number of grounds. I would not ask unless I thought that the information was important, and so important that it was worth the potential breach of your friend’s confidence.”
“Caveat emptor,” said Draco, warily. He racked his brains for what he’d say if Dumbledore accused them of cheating in the Tournament. He could always deny it, of course. He knew Snape had found his potion in the Horntail’s toxicology report, but there was no way to trace that to Draco, unless one of the dragonkeepers had seen them — but then, why wait this long? And if it was about the Second Task, then what was Dumbledore’s problem? Harry hadn’t cheated at all, for that one. Did it have something to do with Snape? His mother? Crouch?
Dumbledore peered soulfully over his pince-nez. “Has Harry complained of unusual pains in his scar?”
Draco drummed his fingers on the chair for a moment, waiting. When no follow-up was forthcoming, he reclined in surprise.
“Is that it? That’s all you want to know?”
“It would be an impoverishing remark on my intellectual character, if it was,” said Dumbledore, “but presently, it is what I want to know most. Compare it to the first stroke of a sculptor’s chisel upon a vast and untouched stone.”
“Yes, alright, but what does his scar have to do with anything?”
“I am not trying to obfuscate my intentions, Draco, but my answer to that question very much depends on yours.”
“Fine. I don’t know. Once or twice, maybe. But it’s Potter, he doesn’t complain much in general.”
Dumbledore leaned forward intently. “Do you have reason to believe that he has experienced pains that he has not reported to you, or others?”
“I don’t know what he’s said to others, obviously, I wasn’t there. If you want to know what Potter’s feeling, you should ask him. Come to think of it,” he added, sharply, “how do you know that his scar’s hurting him?” Belatedly: “Sir.”
Dumbledore’s mouth gave a twitch at the delayed honorific. “I keep in correspondence with all my faculty,” he said, “current and previous, insofar as I am able.”
It only took him a beat. That nagged him — it wouldn’t have taken Hermione any time at all.
“Lupin writes to you?”
“Occasionally. When he has reason for concern.”
“And he’s worried about Potter.”
“Harry reported episodes of acute inexplicable pain,” said Dumbledore, not exactly answering, “accompanied by severe emotional distress, and nightmares. If someone dear to me did the same, I, too, would endeavor to alert his custodians.”
“Of course he has nightmares. If you’d seen half of what he has, you’d have nightmares, too.”
“You are precisely correct,” said Dumbledore solemnly, with a readiness that made Draco wonder what Dumbledore dreamed about. “I am sure that part of his malady is a reasonable reaction to intense compounding stress and a series of traumatic episodes. But I am asking about his scar.”
“I told you everything I know. He’s mentioned it twice—”
“When?”
“When? I don’t know, I don’t keep a journal. Once, over the summer. And then once, again, a few months ago. Why?”
Dumbledore lowered his head. He pressed his fingers to his mouth and closed his eyes.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were shockingly bright.
“I appreciate your confidence in me, Draco,” he said. “If you have further questions, I will answer them to the best of my ability. Otherwise…”
The request was clear. He rose to his feet, then paused. “I do have a question,” he said. “It concerns Professor Snape.”
Dumbledore adjusted his spectacles, silently entreating him to speak.
“What’s his issue with the Potters?”
“…Have you raised this question to your godfather, Draco?”
“Yes. He won’t say. Which makes me imagine that it’s either so horrible he won’t tell me, or so petty he can’t admit it.”
The headmaster disguised his amusement by hiding his mouth behind his steepled hands. “I understand. Without breaking his confidence, I can say only that James Potter was not always the great man he would become; and that, indeed, sometimes the most admirable men of their age begin as very unadmirable little boys.”
Draco’s fingers rolled an impatient drumbeat on the chair. “So he was a prat,” he said flatly. “Is that all?”
Dumbledore gave a slight smile. “You carry much of Severus, yourself,” he said. “I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but in some ways, you carry as much of him as Lucius… then again, in others ways, not… No; while I am certain that Professor Snape would agree with your characterization of James, I do not think it would be apt to distill his feelings so simply. That was not ‘all,’ or even most of it, I’m afraid.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me. It’s private, I understand that.”
“Draco.”
He stopped halfway to the door.
“When you see Sirius, ask him about Lily Evans.”
The name Evans rang a small, inauspicious, and thoroughly rusted bell.
“Who?” He paused. “And how do you know about S—”
“If I answered that question every time it was asked of me,” said Dumbledore pleasantly, “I would not have half the time I require to do anything else. Say hello to him for me, would you?”
He smiled. The door creaked open, apparently of its own accord.
“And — Draco — I thank you wholeheartedly for your assistance. I swear not to forget it.”
Draco expected that was meant to be reassuring, and at first, it was; but as he descended the stairs from the headmaster’s office, and the draft reasserted itself with a cool finger trailing down his neck, so, too, did a claw of doubt — that it wasn’t a reassurance at all.
Back! God, the last week felt like the longest of my life. It feels like I’ve been months away, not weeks. I did move, and I’ve been starting a new job, so there’s been lots to color in the time. But it’s really nice to be back. Every so often, in a long project, you get phases where you feel unconfident in what you’re doing, and you get anxious about whether you can live up to the promises you’re making — but the comments section is my cure for that. I have no idea how to express my gratitude for the reassurances you’ve given me. I feel like I would be amazed if anyone thought my writing was good enough to write some of the things you’ve said about it, and every week, you guys rise to the occasion so astonishingly. I dunno. It’s been a hard week, so I’m extra grateful to have a place to go. (It’s also been a short writing week, which is possibly responsible for the mood!) Anyway. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
-This chapter goes out to the unexpected fun that is writing Mad-Eye Moody and Pansy Parkinson. Whose regard for the other can be summarized as “thank god at least one child at this school seems appropriately grizzled and cynical.”
-Next chapter: an appearance from Harry’s least responsible uncles; and a conversation that has been about 400,000 words in the making.
-Title: “Padfoot’s Return.”
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