Chapter 49: Padfoot’s Return
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
On the last day of March, a rumble broke out over the castle, and flickers of lightning painted the parapets white. Rain followed a heartbeat later, and the castle firmaments groaned in greeting to the first storm of spring.
They were returning from dinner short one member; Ron had been held up by McGonagall for wedging a third-year Slytherin in a broom cupboard. The context included some remark about Harry cheating; Draco’s charmwork had been involved, but she didn’t need to know that.
“No wonder it broke bad for him,” Harry muttered. “Raised by Barty Crouch and Mad-Eye Moody… Tell you what, that kid definitely checked his corners.”
Draco snorted.
“So Snape was a spy,” said Hermione. The Pink Lady swung forth with a murmur of Ariadne. “Which means — at one point — he was a Death Eater.”
“He was a double agent. He had to convince the Dark Lord, of all people, that he was loyal. Small wonder he was convincing.”
“He must have done a pretty good job pretending, if they were going to put him in Azkaban.”
“Wish they had done,” said Harry mutinously. He had received a well-earned T on their Potions essay.
“Harry!”
“Not for long, but c’mon—”
“Dumbledore vouches for him,” said Draco impatiently. “And it’s been fourteen years. I know what you’re thinking—”
“Oh, but I do love sentences that begin that way.”
“—but he’s long since disavowed them. He’s not a Death Eater any more than I am.”
The Gryffindor common room glittered in the artificial night of the storm. Draco climbed through the portrait-hole, relating the last points of his conversation with Snape to Harry and Hermione, and walked straight into a detonating flashbulb that reminded him of lightning.
“Creevey!”
“Jesus, Colin,” snapped Harry, somewhat breathless, and then scrambled at once to stop Draco from jinxing him. The ensuing scuffle ended up getting him a hard whack on the head and an elbow to the gut, but he was still better off than Colin would have been, who skittered out of range behind a table. “Just leave us alone, would you?”
“Sorry, Harry! Sorry, Draco! Accident, promise!” Colin wiggled the camera slyly. “Experimenting with the exposure! Didn’t mean to!”
He turned tail and fled.
“Colin, wait—”
“Harry, the photograph—”
“I know. I’ll get him,” Harry said, pained, and he took off after Colin, who darted up the steps to the boys’ dorm, and was gone.
Draco gripped his wand, entertained a few vivid mental images, and then reluctantly pried his hand away.
“I’m going to speak to McGonagall about him,” said Hermione, quietly. “I suspended him from S.C.R.U.M.B.Y., but I expect it wasn’t enough.”
“No S.C.R.U.M.B.Y.? Think of the Geneva Convention.”
She smiled and crossed to the fire, warming her fingers over the persimmony glow. The common room was empty, though voices murmured from upstairs, thumping footsteps, muffled by the rasp of rain at the window. “Trust me, I have other ideas. But I need him to tell me where Skeeter gets her information, first.”
He did like it so when she schemed. It added a charming bit of chiaroscuro to her moral slate.
Draco shucked his robe over the sofa and leaned on the mantle beside her, sharing its warmth. “He’s her contact, obviously.”
“Obviously. But he can’t be her only one. There are things in that article Colin wouldn’t have known.”
“Causes of action for libel, for instance?”
“That you and I are Potions partners,” she corrected, “and what I wore to the Yule Ball.”
“Anyone could have told him that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because I’m sure everyone was talking about nothing but.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Honestly. You act like I rode in like Godiva on a warhorse.”
“I can think of less apt analogies.”
“It was just a nice dress,” she said, which was rather like calling the Titanic a ‘pretty nice boat.’
He was going to have a Healer locate his mind’s eye and surgically remove it. It would, at the very least, stop him thinking about her coming around the staircase. That was the image that recurred to him, now, and whenever his mind floated away from the work of his hands. The colors of it, the brilliance. The lights, the gold, the smiling. That had been his downfall, in retrospect. If he’d never seen her like that, all dressed up like a grown woman, he would never have started thinking about everything else — the hair, the shoulders, the mouth. He never would have opened his eyes under the water in the prefects’ bathroom, and then it would have been safe to look at her now, darkly shaded in firelight, with her hair coming in thick gold-tipped coils down her shoulders, like a flowering vine of marigolds. It might even have been possible to look away.
There were things he could not do.
He remembered this. He remembered his mother. There were things that happened to people who broke the rules.
But you understand, darling, don’t you? And you will be careful?
I’m a Malfoy. I can do as I like.
I’m sure you can.
He touched his ring, bent the knuckle, and twisted. The pressure left a red crease that lingered after the pain.
“You don’t think I’m cruel, do you?” she said abruptly.
He scoffed. It was an instinct; he wasn’t at all prepared to answer that, and had to grapple first with the shock of being asked in the first place.
“Is there an angle to this, or am I supposed to take that generally?”
“I was thinking about Skeeter. Because of Flint. I’ve been thinking about the things I said to her. And did. Or want to do.”
He watched her warily. “And your findings?”
She was rolling her wand over in her hands, an absent fidget, grinding the tip against her palm. “I haven’t decided. But I have this… suspicion,” she admitted, “that I shouldn’t have to think this much.”
“You think it should be easy?”
“No, but I — sometimes I feel — angry. It wasn’t Skeeter’s fault I was in the lake, but I didn’t care. I was angry, and she was there, and I knew it was alright to hurt her because no one would stop me or care. And sometimes I want to do these awful things to her, or, or Flint, or — and I don’t know what to do with it, because I know I’m in the right. I don’t know how much that matters, though.”
“So?”
“It bothers me,” she said simply. “I don’t want to be cruel. I never intended to be a cruel person, and I don’t like the idea that being here has made me one.”
When she said here, he didn’t know if she meant Hogwarts, or the Wizarding World, or both.
Unbidden, he recalled a very distant memory, from a very different conversation, between two very different people.
I intend to be a thinker and a doer! I’d like to make some positive change in the world.
“And I know you might think it’s simple, or simplistic, and maybe it is,” she was saying. “But I’m asking you because I think you’d tell me. I know you’d tell me. Right?”
“I would,” he allowed, and her shoulders sank infinitesimally in relief. “But you’re not cruel.”
“No?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He discovered he believed this with a confidence he rarely felt about anything, these days, and it was comforting to discover he still had the capacity for this sort of belief. The bedrock kind. The temple floor.
“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better, by the way,” she said, feigning indifference. She wasn’t good at it. She spoke with her hands, and they were too honest; they were already trying to wring themselves for the mistruth. “I can take it. I’m tough.”
“Hermione Granger.” He wondered if it sounded too fond. It was worrisomely close.
She stopped.
“If they cut you open, and withdrew a fragment of a particle of marrow — if they drew a single drop of your heartsblood, and laid it together with one cell of your gray matter — if all that remained of you was a constellation of particles, in other words, you profoundly intransigent idiot — the distilled essence of you, your vanishing remainder, would still hold more goodness in it than this school has under its roof without you.”
She rested her head against the mantle and looked at him frankly for a moment, like she’d never seen him before. He discovered that it was pleasant to say the things that he believed. What a terrible shock.
“So for God’s sake, pull yourself together,” he said.
She laughed with less humor than surprise. Her eyes were shining.
“Sometimes I used to think I imagined you,” she said.
He’d imagined she might come back at him with some sort of equivalently nice or affectionate thing, so this was moderately disappointing. He was brave about it, however.
“That must have been depressing.”
“Did I ever tell you that? Especially over the summers,” she said. “You are so intensely, naturally ridiculous. I cannot imagine you in my primary school, it’s impossible. And so when I went home, I’d think— well, you obviously imagined that. People don’t talk like that. Only you do. And years later, you still do. You remain, without exception, the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met.”
He ran through four or five different replies of varying bemusement and stupefaction, before settling on: “I talk perfectly normally, thank you very much.”
She wrinkled her nose, shook her head, and snickered. Her laugh blunted his edge of anxiety.
“Thank you, by the way. For Flint.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“I know,” she said calmly, “and I would’ve stopped him, but I appreciate that — I mean, I know it cost you something, with the Slytherins. I expect they won’t soon welcome you back. And I hope you’ll be careful with them, too, in the future — I mean, I know you think you’re Merlin’s gift to dueling and all, and you are quite good at it, but these aren’t sporting people, and they like to gang up.”
“They’re not going to attack me—”
“I know you think so, and you might be right, but listen to me anyways. You’re not used to these people hating you. It’s a very different place to stand.”
His lip curled. There was something slimy and repulsive to the way she described it like an exchange. A sacrifice of capital. It wasn’t like that. Flint wasn’t allowed to touch her. That wasn’t something he’d decided, it was a fact.
“Don’t concern yourself,” he said shortly. “It’s very little to do with you. I’ve been wanting to try out that jinx for months.”
“Right. Well — I’m glad you had the opportunity. To try. They were — a bit unorthodox.”
“They’re independently researched,” he said casually. “If you’re interested, I can show you.”
She thought about it. “For self-defense purposes only,” she decided, “I suppose.”
“Naturally. And French.”
“I don’t need you to teach me French.”
“But if you did, you admit—”
“Why are we back to French? I don’t care about French.”
“—just saying, I’m a man of many talents—”
“Not that it even matters, because frankly, I’d rather not know what any of those girls are saying when I walk by them, I hear them giggling and I know it’s not kind—”
“—not just curses and potions, I’ve hidden depths—”
“—like that girl at the Three Broomsticks — her tone was quite enough. ‘We sleep there.’ Good Lord. I understood perfectly well what she meant when she said that, thank you, and let me tell you, I’ve no interest in hearing more.”
“Ça sonnait mieux quand tu l’as dit.”
“What does that mean?”
“If only someone could teach you, perhaps you’d find out.”
The portrait-door introduced itself to their conversation with a noisome creak. A gasp of voices issued from the hall outside, voices that fell short when they came into the common room, for reasons that became clear as soon as their source became clear.
Ron stood framed in the dark round of the portrait-hole, addressing them with a lingering stare of fascination and dismay, like an archeologist unearthing the remains of an animal that oughtn’t exist. His gaze rebounded from one to the other across a distance of so little space his head didn’t even move.
Draco stepped back, which he realized too late only made it worse.
“Hello, Ron,” said Hermione, and though it warbled with awkwardness, it was with a stilted, hoarse gladness that she turned to greet him. She took a half-step toward him as if he’d shifted the gravity of the room.
“Hi,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“You didn’t.” She drifted another few eager steps forward and latched to the back of an armchair, as if she needed to staple herself in place. “Do you — do you want to sit down, and have a cuppa? We can go over the Charms homework.”
He softened when Hermione spoke; it was obvious, and it provoked a sharp stab of discomfort in Draco to watch. Making up had left her treating Ron somewhat gingerly, with uncharacteristic softness, and one didn’t begrudge him it so much as one found it awfully hard not to notice.
Ron fancied her. Daphne had been getting at it, at the Yule Ball, but he’d been too thick and distracted to listen. It was embarrassingly obvious, now that he had rediscovered how to operate his bloody eyeballs. Ron looked at her like he was the first dirty-kneed fourteen-year-old to invent the idea of a crush. Sappy and timid and longing and standoffish, not a single bit of it original, but all horribly, earnestly felt. Daphne had been right. The more fool him, not listening to her.
Amidst a wave of amused disdain, he felt an unexpected peal of sympathy. It must have taken a toll on Ron, the anxiety of it, the horrible quagmire of fresh feeling. What awkwardness, what jealousy. He must have been — Merlin, he must have been jealous; it was quite impossible not to be. Naturally he’d feel resentment. Draco couldn’t blame him a bit for that, and in fact very nearly forgave him on the spot. All that would be enough to drive a man mad, even putting aside the fact that she didn’t fancy him back.
Which she didn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t possibly. He wasn’t being a prat, merely applying the available evidence to the question at hand. Ron was a good mate and a nice fellow and pretty clever when you put him in front of a chessboard, but he was a human bloke, and that was one thing. Hermione was quite another.
For one thing, she was actually, properly deranged — half madness, half fury, all brilliant, approximately nine-tenths natural disaster — all bound up around a moral backbone of dazzling raw platinum and not one spare iota of tact. If she were going to fancy someone, it would be — it would be no one. It would be Merlin come again, with better cheekbones. It would take the second greatest wizard of her age to even hold her attention.
The poor unlucky bastard. Fancying Hermione Granger was a bit like flying into a hurricane and hoping you’d hit the eye before you drowned. He ought to know.
Through a rather inhospitable volley of spring rain, a slim fraction of Gryffindor waded down the wet slopes for the last Hogsmeade trip of the year. It was amusing to watch Harry eagerly skip ahead of the group, stall, and then dither impatiently while the rest of them tramped through thick sluices of mud. It was almost amusing enough to compensate for the wet.
A winding lane behind Hogsmeade led up to the Shrieking Shack. On the razed hill, encrusted with black dead trees, the old building sat under a deluge of rain like shipwreck, jutting black tongues of splintered wood into the rain. The windows were dark, but at the garden gate, a great black dog sat on its haunches, its nose probing the air eagerly for something.
It shot down the path at a breakneck pace. Harry made it three bounding steps forward before the dog hurled itself into the air, tackled Harry to the ground, and let out a bark of such excitement that it scattered crows from the trees.
Boy and dog went rolling through the mud, and somewhere in the braid of brown and white and black, the dog shifted, leaving in its place a tall man with a great black shag of rockstar hair, who sat laughing in a pile of limbs and dirt and absolutely defiled clothes, one arm around Harry’s neck, grinding his knuckles mercilessly into Harry’s head.
“Hey! Oi! Gerroff!”
“Oh, you want off, is it? Not so big and strong, are you, now, boy? Still not big enough to tangle with your old Uncle Pad— whoa—”
Harry had squirmed and flipped Sirius into the mud, sending him skidding to the bottom of a hill. The man gave a bellow of delighted laughter as he went.
“Good arm! Course, you got lucky — caught me off guard—”
“Hello, Padfoot,” said Hermione, “and it’s nice to see you, and everything, but someone could hear us.”
“Aw, yeah, but they won’t know it’s me,” said Sirius, grinning, as he stumbled to his feet. “We’ve been around for a few days now, and nobody’s come up here. It’s the weather, keeps everyone indoors. Alright, you lot?”
Draco dipped his head with dignity. Ron shuffled forward and clapped hands with him.
“Good to see you, mate.”
“And you,” Sirius said generously. “Let’s get you inside. Moony’s making tea.”
They rushed in from the rain, and Sirius shucked his raincloak carelessly over a banister, revealing a long, sweeping black tailcoat that hung over his sunken bare chest. Black runic tattoos latticed the feeble landscape of muscle there, deflated slightly from his emaciation, though a promising fullness had returned under his cheeks. He wore thick-soled boots of scabbed leather, which creaked on the withered floorboards of the Shack as he wandered into the living room, hollering: “Moony! Company!”
The stairs gave an announcing creak, and Remus came hurtling down, almost fumbling the last steps. “You took your time getting them,” he said breathlessly. “I was starting to worry—”
“And here it comes,” said Sirius, rolling his eyes. “You would’ve worried if I’d Apparated them. What don’t you worry about, old goat, that’s what I want to know.”
“—why I never ask you to do anything that needs doing in the next fortnight. Oh, shut up,” said Remus affectionately, and clapped Sirius hard around the shoulder in what might have been an embrace, or possibly just a hello. Sirius clucked his tongue and fussed at him. “Harry! Hello! Merlin, you’re getting tall!”
“That’s what I said,” said Sirius. “Dunno where the hell it comes from, James never was.”
“Pft. Lils had, what, an inch on him, I think? In heels?”
“My dad was short?” said Harry, whose delight at receiving information about his father warred with his obvious dismay.
“Yes.”
“Not exactly.”
“A munchkin.”
“In a tall group—”
“Needed to stand on the seats at matches.”
“He was five foot ten,” said Remus.
“Four eight on a good day, bless his soul,” said Sirius, with one hand over his heart. “I can still hear him, sometimes, asking me to fetch a stool.”
“Right,” said Harry, trying not to sound disappointed. “But my mum, you know, I might get it from her. The height. I mean, you never know.”
He shot a furtive look at Ron, who could already look Sirius in the eye. Ron smirked at him.
“Oh, sure,” said Sirius, flopping into one of the chairs. His leg hooked over the armrest, and he laced his fingers behind his head. “Came from a family of ceiling-dusters, she did. Mary liked to call her the Amazon. And the other Evans girl you could use as a maypole.”
“I think you made that joke to her, once,” said Remus. “She didn’t take it well.”
“Mm, no. Never did have the sense of humor Merlin gave a rock.”
“You’ve met Aunt Petunia?” said Harry.
“Against my will,” said Sirius, lifting a finger, “twice. The first time, I was unprepared. The second time—”
“Was your fault,” Remus said amusedly, leaning against the wall.
“Was an accident! How was I meant to know the dress was supposed to be that color? I was trying to help!”
Draco straightened. The connection between Aunt Petunia, Lily Evans, and Petunia Evans suddenly resolved.
He still hadn’t the foggiest what all that had to do with Snape.
“Come have some tea, Harry,” said Remus, tipping his head to the kitchen. “We haven’t much food — we’ve been having to steal from the Hogsmeade general store, and whatever people toss out—”
“You should have told us!” Harry was upset. “We could’ve brought you something!”
Sirius flapped his hand. “We’re fine. We’ve both been making do on our own for years. We hunt when we camp — very easy on full moons—”
Hermione shuddered. Only Draco seemed to notice, for Sirius steamed right along: “…and salt whatever we don’t eat, pack it up, go along. Buckbeak’s a great help, too, he’s off in the mountains—”
“Won’t he get lost?” said Ron.
“That creature? Not if you paid him to,” said Sirius. “Wretched thing’s part homing pigeon. He’s been following us around for months now. Thinks Moony’s his mum, not that I blame him—”
“Yes,” called Remus lightly, padding into the kitchen on bare feet. “It appears that all sorts of dangerous things like to imprint on me. I’m sure I haven’t a clue why. Now, Harry, how do you like your tea?”
Sirius turned pink and blew a raspberry. Laughter from the kitchen informed them all what Remus thought of this.
When tea had been served, they gathered in the living room, with Remus and Sirius throned in a pair of adjacent armchairs, the four of them planted in file on the couch. Remus lit a few candles, and the wind moaned helplessly on the grime-stained windows of the Shack, while a draft hurried in mad circles around their ankles, and chipped tea mugs warmed their fingers. The chill sank into the wet tips of Draco’s hair, and lingered there, while the conversation wandered in happy irrelevant circles — Sirius and Remus were very interested in Harry’s life, and listened gladly to his tales of Divination lessons, trips to Hagrid’s hut, and romantic woe with the kind indulgence of those for whom such trials were long past — until it eventually paddled into deeper waters.
“What’s this about Ludo Bagman?” said Sirius finally, setting his empty mug on the ottoman. Remus flicked his wand and conjured a coaster underneath it. “You mentioned him in your last letter.”
“What? Oh, yeah,” said Harry, blushing and breaking off a heinously long digression on what kind of flowers might be preferred by Ravenclaw seekers. “We think he’s got a bet on me. He was trying to coach me, in the First Task — we think, anyway — and then before the Second Task, he came into the tent and started sort of, like, talking to himself about how to deal with grindylows? Which I already knew, anyway,” he added, with a nod at Remus, who gave a small smile. “But I think the Ministry’s caught on, or at least Crouch has, because they didn’t look too pleased with each other, after the Second Task.”
“Ludo’s bet on you?” said Remus, frowning. He leaned forward on his knees, folding his hands between them. “Why?”
“He needs money to pay Fred and George,” explained Ron. “They bet all their savings on the Quidditch World Cup, you see, seven thousand galleons, two-to-one odds, but he gave them leprechaun gold, so now he’s trying to get them—”
“No,” said Sirius absently, flicking a hand to cut him off. “Sorry, Ron, but a man like Ludo’s not concerned with a pair of sixteen-year-old creditors. That bet’s not even legal, anyway, your brothers aren’t of-age.”
“You’re not wrong,” agreed Remus, “but you don’t have all the facts. Ludo Bagman — the Bagman I knew, anyway — is a high-roller. This is a man who collects Rolex watches. On a high-profile match like the Cup, he’d easily have six or seven figures riding on it. Seven thousand galleons is nothing to him. He’s got friends who could buy that debt for the cost of a lunch.”
“Well, but he could still have other people going after him,” argued Ron. “Fred and George weren’t the only people he talked to. He was betting big on Bulgaria, right? Bet he made the same wager to other people, too. Maybe some rich ones. People you wouldn’t want to piss off.”
“But why Harry?” added Sirius, squinting in thought. “I mean, assuming you’re right, and that this is a matter of money, which I’m not altogether sold on— Bagman is in Games and Sports. He’s got a finger on almost every match that happens in Britain. If he wanted to rig something — why go this big?” He spread his hands. “The Triwizard Tournament? First in a century? Proctored by Barty Crouch, the greatest narc of all time? Why not just, say, give the Chudley Cannons a good season, for once?”
“Oi!” said Ron. “But fair.”
“That’s another thing,” said Remus suddenly. He lifted his head. “Are you sure he’s trying to rig it?”
“Pretty sure,” admitted Harry. “He was laying it on thick.”
“I believe you, but what help has he given you, exactly?” Remus tilted his head to one side. “Besides suggesting a very common spell for dealing with dragons, and feeding you advice from the third-year Defense curriculum? He’s not exactly putting his back out.”
“In his defense,” said Draco, “this is not the spit of Merlin we’re dealing with. Bagman was a quidditch player. It may be the case that ‘poke it in the eye’ is his idea of grand strategy.”
Sirius snorted. “Yeah, he’s a mediocre wizard,” he said, “but he’s a wicked gamesman. He’s not rich because he was born that way, let me say that much. If he wanted Harry to win, he’d be winning.”
“I’m in second place,” Harry reminded them, a bit tetchy.
“Not because of Bagman, though,” said Hermione, knitting her brows. “We’ve helped you loads more than him… but honestly, I don’t see why any of this is important. If he’s not hurting Harry, then what does it matter? Maybe he feels bad for him being forced to compete. I would.”
“Sympathy?” Sirius snickered, tossing one leg over the other. “Yeah, that sounds like old Ludo.”
“…Well? Why not?”
Remus gave her a teacherly smile. “Ludo Bagman is not a good person,” he said. “He doesn’t have a selfless bone in his body. He was arrested after the War for selling Ministry secrets to Death Eaters.”
Hermione’s jaw went slack. After a moment, she demanded: “And they still gave him a job?”
“Told you he was connected,” yawned Sirius. “The Bagmans and the Rookwoods go back. Crouch tried to put him in Azkaban, but of course, that business with his son sort of overshadowed the case… And honestly, it’s not like he’s the biggest threat to the Wizarding World, is he, little washed-up scumbag—”
“But he worked with Death Eaters!”
Draco rubbed a small circle into his temple. The couch was small, and her mouth was not far from his ear.
“A lot of people worked with Death Eaters,” said Remus, not unkindly, but not gently, either. “And a lot of Death Eaters were fairly powerful people. If they cleaned out everyone who had a dirty connection somewhere, they would’ve had to clean out the whole Ministry.”
“Then they should’ve done that!” Hermione sat up very straight, holding her spine like a lightning rod. Draco subtly leaned away, wary of getting tagged with a stray elbow. “Maybe we wouldn’t have a pack of horrible people running the Ministry now, if everyone had just done it right the first time, instead of sticking their heads in the sand! There was a war! People died!”
“We know,” said Sirius. “We were there.”
Hermione fell silent.
Remus eased upright gingerly, his hands flexing on his knees. “You’re entirely right, Hermione. I’ve often thought the same thing. But there wasn’t anything we could do.”
“But the Order—”
“The Order was never part of the Ministry. That’s what made us effective.”
“So you were a paramilitary group.”
Sirius gave a honk of surprised laughter. “Is that how they talk about us, now?” he said, grinning. “That’s ripping. Makes us sound properly cool.”
“It seems so organized. It didn’t feel like that at all.”
“No. I mean, Mad-Eye was always getting on us about discipline and chain of command, but I don’t think we ever got close to meeting his standards. He’d trained in the Auror Academy, and we were a bunch of seventeen-year-old guerrilla fighters. Remember when he tried to make Frank a corporal—?”
“Yes,” said Remus fondly, “but he wouldn’t stop taking orders from Alice, even though he outranked her. So Moody promoted her over him, to commander, and made him the only member of her unit. Just to keep the chain of command intact.”
“Just as well! Once saw Alice down a bloke with three pencils and a torch. Worst thing Frank ever did for the Cause was knock her up.”
“Frank and Alice?” said Harry curiously, and Sirius froze. His smile calcified and then shrank, slowly, into something brittle.
“Longbottom,” he said, after a beat.
“Like Neville?”
“His parents,” said Remus. He and Sirius were both looking at the ground.
“…Are they dead?”
“No,” said Sirius. But neither elaborated.
Ron cleared his throat and stood up. “My tea’s cold,” he said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Gonna put another kettle on. Anyone want some?”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Harry, clearly grateful for much more than the water, and he stood up. “You, Sirius? Remus?”
“Sure, sure,” said Remus, distantly coming back to himself. “Speaking of Moody, I hear he’s replaced me, this year… is he much better?”
“No,” said Harry immediately.
“Not even close,” said Ron.
“Not at all,” said Hermione unhappily. “He doesn’t stick to the book! I don’t think he’s even read it.”
“That’s fair, I didn’t either,” said Remus indolently, wandering into the kitchen. Hermione spluttered.
Draco remembered something.
“He’s on bad terms with Professor Snape,” he said. “And Mr. Crouch. Professor Moody has been absent at the Tournament, and Snape thinks he’s avoiding him.”
Remus paused in the doorway to the kitchen, and turned back. “Well, Snape, I understand,” he said. “Mad-Eye hated spies. He thought they were slimy. Dumbledore had to argue him down from dosing Snape with Veritaserum every time he showed up for a meeting—”
“Which I always supported,” said Sirius, “on the grounds that it would’ve been bloody hilarious—”
“My mother,” interrupted Draco, suppressing a flare of irritation, “thinks he’s dangerous. Professor Moody. Any idea why?”
Sirius spoke. “Your mum’s probably not the head you want on this. The last time she would’ve seen him was fifteen years ago, when he was firing curses at her husband’s back.” He shrugged. “I’ll say this for Moody, though: he never ran from a fight. He was a tough nut, and there was no living with him, but he never turned his back on an enemy, not once.”
He pointed at Ron. “If your brother is Crouch’s personal assistant, though, you might ask him if there’s something afoot with Moody and Crouch.”
“I can try,” said Ron doubtfully. “I already wrote him about Diggory and Bones—”
“What? What’s wrong with them, now?”
“They were fired,” said Hermione.
Remus startled. “Fired? Amy? Why?”
“Amy’s sister married a muggle,” she said, “and Diggory — I don’t want to presume, but I think it’s a fair inference to say that Diggory was fired because some people at the Ministry are bigots, and don’t like that his son is seeing Neil Macdonald.”
“Macdonald?” Sirius sat up. “Mary’s boy?”
“I — w— that’s not the point, Sirius.”
“And he’s seeing a Diggory?”
“I… I mean, I can’t speak for them, personally…”
“But that’s fantastic!”
“No! I mean, yes, but not for Amos! And not for Neil, either! He was almost expelled for turning Marcus Flint into a snake!”
“I don’t know who that is,” said Sirius, “but if Mary’s boy thought he deserved it, he probably did.” He gave an unwholesome little smile. “If they’re going to play with people’s families, they ought to expect some of us to come back swinging. Might teach them to think twice.”
“You know it won’t,” she said impatiently. “And it’s a bad sign of which way the wind’s blowing at the Ministry. The firings aren’t the only thing that’s been suspicious. There have been more attacks, but no one’s done anything — the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup is still under investigation, Merlin knows what happened there — and Bertha Jorkins’ disappearance hasn’t been followed up on at all. Not that that’s any surprise, seeing as she’s muggle-born; if I went missing tomorrow, I’m sure they wouldn’t bother to look—”
“Granger,” Draco snapped. That was a horrid thought, and it demeaned them both to consider it.
“What?”
“There’s no need— that’s an exaggeration.”
“Barely!”
“It’s not a remotely appropriate comparison. You’re a student at the safest place in the world. Jorkins was a grown adult somewhere she shouldn’t have been.”
“Somewhere she shouldn’t have been?” Hermione’s head cocked at a dangerous angle. “So it’s her fault?”
“It’s incredible, you know, the way those words never came out of my mouth, and yet you seemed to hear them.”
“It doesn’t take a genius. She’s a muggle-born, right?” Her tone vaulted precipitously on every third word. “And us muggle-borns, we have to be careful where we go, or we might accidentally trip into a Death Eater, and they’ll have no choice but to hurt us.”
There was a silence of five facets, each one ogling each other with a wary curiosity about whether they would speak first. If it was any thicker it could be used for mortar.
With the grimace of a man striking black ice, Sirius said, “Hermione, I happen to agree with him.”
“Oh, do y—”
“Obviously it’s not her fault,” he said, carefully easing himself upright. “But there’s danger and then there’s danger, and better witches than Bertha Jorkins have gone missing in Romania.”
“But you said it was because she was a muggle-born. That it wasn’t safe for people like her. Like me, that is.”
“Dumbledore would never let you come to harm,” said Remus, calm and measured. That was more than anyone else seemed to feel: Draco, for one, had a tight squirming feeling in his chest that wanted to hex something into as many shards as possible, and the other boys didn’t look like they were on much better terms with their innards. “At Hogwarts, you’re under his protection, and he—”
“Like Daphne was?”
There was a silence like the quiet of the mountains after an avalanche. The wind moaned.
Remus leaned on the arm of his chair and touched his mouth with the back of his knuckles like he was going to be sick.
Harry gawked furiously at Hermione. Draco drummed his fingers on the armrest, debating whether to broach the silence.
He didn’t think she was wrong, actually. Out of order, possibly. Certainly unkind, with respect to Remus. But her point, concerning Dumbledore, was far from wrong.
“I — oh, God, Remus, I — I’m sorry,” she said, after a moment. “I don’t know why I — I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s alright,” said Remus, in a voice so thin it was a whisper. “It’s an entirely fair point.”
“No, it’s not,” snarled Sirius.
“No, it’s not,” agreed Hermione, blinking quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I don’t blame you at all, it’s not—”
“Nobody thinks it’s your fault,” said Harry, still glaring at Hermione. “It’s not your control. It’s the Ministry’s fault. And Snape’s.”
“Hang on,” said Draco.
“No, yes, Snape’s. If he hadn’t told Nott about Remus—”
“On the understanding that there would be aurors to contain the problem,” said Draco coldly.
“You can’t seriously be defending him! He thought he was sending Lupin to Azkaban.”
“He thought he was protecting the school. Did he accomplish it, perhaps not—”
“He was servicing a twenty-year grudge,” interrupted Sirius. “I’m sure he didn’t intend any kids to end up hurt, but let’s not get ideas about Severus Snape’s better angels.”
“He’s been working for Dumbledore ever since you went to Azkaban,” Draco snapped. “If you think he’s not on your side—”
“He was a Death Eater,” said Hermione, in clipped tones, like she was firing a Stunning Spell. Like she expected that to put down the argument, no objections, no debate, just Hermione and her sodding Right Opinions all the time, and honestly, feelings or no feelings, sometimes he really couldn’t stand it.
This was the sort of thing that Theo and Pansy would have understood. It was the sort of thing they wouldn’t even bother to talk about, they understood it so well. Maybe he’d been wrong about them. Maybe he ought to have given them more chances, instead of running off to throw in with a passel of block-headed numpties who couldn’t understand the slightest degree of moral ambiguity. Who’d write you off as soon as you so much as flinched in your convictions.
“He turned coat.”
“At the last possible minute,” muttered Sirius, clambering to his feet. “Because he happened to be obsessed with a woman who hadn’t spoken to him in years. Don’t be fooled, that man’s moral compass is a weathervane. If Voldemort had gone for Alice instead of Lily, Severus Snape would be in Azkaban.”
“…What?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, like he’d been clubbed. “What d’you mean, about my mum?”
“Even if he did turn, he was still a Death Eater,” repeated Hermione, in short sharp syllables, like she was pruning a rosebush. “That means, at one point, he was perfectly alright hunting and killing muggles and muggle-borns.”
“You have no proof he ever did that. You don’t know—”
“Yes, I do. I do, actually. Do you want to know how?” She didn’t stop for an answer; she barely stopped for breath. “Because you told me. You said so to my face. ‘Death Eater was a real title, it referred to a fledged soldier of the Dark Lord, and there aren’t that many of them left.’ Remember? You don’t get to be a fledged soldier just by showing up at the meetings.”
Hermione had an almost perfect memory. He usually liked that about her. Admired it. Envied it, sometimes. He’d never hated it before.
“Fine.” It wasn’t. “So what?” He knew what.
“So what? So what! I don’t know, it’s irrational, but you see, I’m a bit troubled, Draco, honestly, by the information that at one point, one of my professors would’ve killed me if he had the chance.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” he snapped. “Nobody’s killing you. Compose yourself—”
“Excuse me?”
Ron stood up. “Oi,” he said roughly. “Time out. Enough. Hermione, c’mon, let’s get some air.”
“No. I want Draco to explain what he thinks.”
Inside him a cold set of claws dragged their points into the soft lining of his stomach.
“Yeah, and I don’t think you actually do want him to do that, right now,” said Ron, with a shocking degree of calm. “I think you want some air.”
“Ronald Weasley, don’t you dare tell me what I want.”
“I’m not. I’m not, alright? I’m saying, this is a great chance — Malfoy, close your mouth, I swear to Merlin — this is a great chance for us to go get some air, and let Harry,” he said significantly, “talk to Moony and Padfoot. By himself. You know, get a bit of a family chat.”
“Butt out, Weasley.”
He flashed Draco a short cool glance. “Anyway,” he said to Hermione, “I don’t reckon we’re going to hammer out all our differences before we’ve got to go back, so we might as well table it, right? It’s not like someone’s demanding our urgent opinion on whether Severus Snape’s a bastard. Or Draco Malfoy, come to think of it.”
She snorted.
“I don’t suppose I need to say how rich it is that you’re playing peacemaker, Ronald.”
“Yeah, because rowing with you two was shite,” he said angrily, “and I don’t fancy doing it again.”
“Fascinatingly, I don’t recall inviting you into it,” he said.
“You’re not the only people in a conversation just because you’d prefer to be, mate.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fine,” Hermione snapped. “We’ll get some air. As a favor to Harry—”
“Hang on,” said Harry uncomfortably.
“—and to you, I won’t ask Draco to explain himself — even though I don’t think any of us would be particularly surprised—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” she said, and stood up. “Absolutely nothing at all. In fact, I apologize for — losing composure.” Her cheeks were a rich floral color, almost unreal, as if the words she’d suppressed were suffusing her face with tint. She snatched up her mug and saucer, shot Draco a look that sent searing pain lancing through his stomach, and then delivered both cup and sneer into the kitchen. Ron sucked a breath through his teeth and hurried along behind her, catching the kitchen door on the backswing, and the last thing that could be glimpsed before the door sealed shut behind them was Ron reaching out to touch her arm.
Draco’s stomach had nearly doubled over with cramping.
Remus delicately cleared his throat.
Harry said, “Um. Sorry, Remus.”
“Quite alright, Harry. Consider it forgotten.”
“I mean, she’s been — it’s been really hard on her, with the Tournament, and school, and the stuff about muggle-borns, and everything—”
“You don’t need to apologize for her,” rasped Remus, and smiled thinly. “Your mother said far worse to me, when she was fifteen.”
“…My mum?”
“Oh, I reckon. Lily the Great,” said Sirius, flicking his wand at the teacups, which lifted and danced a merry caravan into the kitchen. “Once called me — what was it, Moony? That one row in fifth year? Flat-arse inbred?”
“Cheese-eating inbred, I think.”
“Cheese-eating! And she called you a chav.”
“What?” Harry was stunned. “She didn’t.”
“In fairness, she was more a chav than I was,” said Remus.
“It was true enough, for me,” said Sirius, stretching. “The inbred part, anyway. I resent ‘cheese-eating.’ I think she meant I was being a coward, which, at the time… never stayed sore for long, though.”
“Then she is unlike Granger in at least one respect,” said Draco. His voice was steady. His heartbeat was tolling in his head, harsher than the muffled clash of voices from the kitchen. He was glad he couldn’t hear them.
He didn’t know why none of them could understand. There were things more important than guilt or innocence. It wasn’t like Snape had always had a choice.
One couldn’t choose one’s family. That was what Harry couldn’t understand, and what Hermione and Ron never seemed to have trouble with, because they had the good fortune of families who had never obligated them to any danger with their beliefs. And it wasn’t as if he liked what his family was, in fact he tended to abhor the things it might require — he had no desire to see himself in a bone mask with a black scar eating up his arm, it scared him like death, worse even — but if there wasn’t a choice, if it was that or a wand at his mother’s head—
He almost choked on the fury that he might not be offered a modicum of understanding for it. They didn’t have to agree with it, but he had earned, in his opinion, the right not to be thought a monster for having the audacity to love his mother.
That had been the soul of his father’s sacrifice. His father was dead for reasons that none of them would ever understand and frankly he didn’t either, not entirely, but if they couldn’t forgive Severus Snape — who had turned coat, who had done the only thing a man could possibly do to redeem himself — then it took no particular exercise of the imagination to think how they would rate Lucius Malfoy’s great gesture of devotion. In fact, most people in the room would have celebrated his death.
At least two of them probably had.
His gorge rose.
He stood up and walked out.
Harry called his name. This was ignored. Draco ripped open the door with a swish of his wand and swept it closed behind him, tumbling down into the stinging teeth of the rain.
Mud scattered under his boots. He made it four long strides into the coursing wet before the door clattered, and the voice that called after him, surprisingly, was not Harry’s.
“Oi,” hollered Sirius. “Hang on a minute.”
He trotted down the stairs and caught up with Draco in moments. The rain flattened the great black carpet of his hair into a long curtain, and pressed his clothes to the slender ligatures of his frame. He swung around to stand in front of Draco and planted his feet in the dirt, his hands planted on his bony hips.
“Dunno where you think you’re going by yourself, kid,” he said.
“I don’t know why you think it’s any of your business.”
“Firstly, I’m your uncle—”
“Second cousin, and technically neither, by the Laws, now get out—”
“Hang the Laws of Blood,” said Sirius indifferently. “Dumb relics. Never liked them.”
“Considering you’ve never suffered from an iota of filial duty in your life, I’m not surprised.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused. Move yourself, or I’ll do it for you.”
Sirius blinked. His eyebrows lifted in a great, slow arc of black shag. “Aye,” he said. “Wondered when this would come up. Held out on me, you did.”
“What? The fact that you’re a blood traitor? Yes, I’m rather surprised it hasn’t been an issue before. Believe me, I blame the lapse wholly on myself.”
“No,” said Sirius, with unnerving calm. “I mean, maybe it is, I’m sure your mum’s told you all sorts of resentful rubbish about me. But I don’t think you really care.”
“An exceptionally rare observation. Now that we’re in agreement, would you please— ”
“I was a blood traitor when you met me,” he said. “Didn’t bother you, did it?”
“I’ve made clear that I was in an exceptionally poor period of judgment, and that any errors in conduct, idiocy notwithstanding, are being corrected forthwith. It bothers me now, and so I’m giving you one more warning to get out of my way.”
“You’re a blood traitor, you know.”
He drew his wand.
“Take it back.” His head was washed clear with vitriol and the scalding impulse to level something. If that something was Sirius Black, so be it. He’d make peace with Harry later. “I’ll have your tongue out for that kind of insult, Black. Take it back.”
“No, you won’t,” said Sirius calmly. He didn’t even twitch in the direction of his wand; he just kept standing there, his hands on his hips, one knee cocked, as the storm-black sky knit and furled over their heads. A dull roar of rain lashed the treetops. “For one thing, I’d be shocked if you could land a curse in this state. That hand’s shaky as a doxy on —oof!”
The spell caught him in the gut and hurled him backwards. Sirius soared and landed in a tumble of rags and hair in the dirt, a small mushroom of mud, the hard wet sound of his body denting the earth.
He sat up and spat a thick mouthful of mud into the grass. “Fuck!” he said, clearly and powerfully, but without any particular vitriol.
Draco gripped his wand with red knuckles and took a few quick steps back when Sirius staggered upright, increasingly aware of the thirty-something war veteran he’d jinxed; cold fingers scrabbled up his spine, but he rooted himself to the spot, swallowed, readied himself for the counter. He could do it. He could. He’d practiced.
“Alright,” said Sirius, after a moment. “Wrong about that one. I see that now.” And he clambered upright, grimacing, rubbing his tailbone, muttering something inaudible: “…all to hell, James… sod Cissa… said I was never having kids.”
“Black, I hit you.”
“Yeah, don’t do that again,” said Sirius.
He cracked his neck and stepped forward; Draco stepped back. Sirius rolled his eyes.
“Put that away. I’m not going to duel you, you dull ponce, you’re fourteen.”
“I challenged you,” he said, fear crumbling against indignation. “You — you insulted my family, and I demand—”
“Satisfaction? Tough. Life’s a bitch,” said Sirius indifferently. “You’re not the first half-decent little inbred twat who’s figured out he’s going to have to let the side down. Find some other outlet for the disappointment. I, for one, got in a fistfight with Regulus.”
“…What?”
“You’re a blood traitor,” he repeated. Draco’s wand twitched up; Sirius calmly stepped forward and plucked it out of his hand.
He made a noise of fury and disgruntlement, but then Sirius cuffed him on the ear, and the shock startled him into silence. “Filthy worthless no-good disappointment of a blood traitor, that’s you, and if you had a brain and a spine you’d be proud of it, but you’ve decided to have a tantrum instead, which is awfully pedestrian of you, just saying.”
“I am not—”
“A blood traitor. You are.” Sirius pointed his own wand at him judiciously. “It’s what they’ll call you, your family, when they figure out you’re not a monster.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Better,” said Sirius, almost pleased. “Getting somewhere, now. Go on.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he snarled, “with the rusted spoke of your own presumption, mutt. I am not a blood traitor. I’m the heir to the Houses of Malfoy and Black—”
“Deliciously ironic, but otherwise irrelevant.”
“—the son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy—”
“A misfortune from which you have recovered laudably,” said Sirius.
“—I am the greatest pureblood of the age. I am traitor to nothing. I have done nothing — I will do nothing to, to violate, to besmirch — you are nothing to me, your words are nothing to me—”
“Sure seems like it.”
“You don’t understand. I’m the last one. If not me — if I cannot—”
He struggled, failed, and his throat closed over. He was suddenly embalmed in radiant self-loathing, like bathing in scalding feces.
“You’re panicking, you poor twit,” said Sirius. “Sit down before you pass out, why don’t you.”
When his order was ignored, he reached out and gave Draco a firm shove on the chest. Draco’s heel slipped in the dirt. He fell hard on the hill, cold mud soaking his back, and when he struggled up, Sirius planted a boot on his chest.
“Stay.”
Draco curled his lip, awash in loathing; but he relaxed, and uncurled his fists.
The shoe removed itself. Draco stayed down.
Sirius neatly flicked out his coat and sat down next to him, leaning on his haunches, a rather canine position. He yawned and stabbed Draco’s wand into the mud, its handle jutting up like a spindly bald flower. Draco wrenched it out and began cleaning it furiously on his shirt.
His uncle yawned and began to whistle, drumming his fingers on his knees.
Draco despised him more than most things living or dead. He contemplated several means by which he could kill him, and then, upon realizing that it was actually making him feel better, fell once more to acute misery and distress.
With his wand cleaned and returned to its sheath, he steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and breathed as well as could be managed, under the circumstances.
“Wet as Merlin’s fucking twat out here,” said Sirius, by and by.
Draco made a sharp noncommittal noise. The two of them marinated in the loud silence of the rain, which was, verily, wet as Merlin’s fucking twat.
“Birds or blokes?”
“What.”
Sirius flicked his fingers in an off-the-cuff gesture of indifference. “You’re that age. Started to figure it out for myself, when I was around there. Birds, blokes, or both?”
Of course that was what Sirius Black wanted to talk about while Draco’s world collapsed. Smashing. Exceptional. His life was a perfect arc towards everlasting happiness.
“…Not blokes.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Draco stared at him. Then he returned his eyes to the sodden, rain-black earth.
“I have a question,” he muttered.
“Good for you.”
“Was Potter’s mother named Evans?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sirius mildly. His nose wrinkled. “Why?”
“Dumbledore mentioned her when I asked him why Professor Snape hated Potter’s father.”
The wrinkle count doubled. “Dunno about that,” he said. “He hated James because he was a bully and a stinker, not because of anything to do with Lils. Originally, anyway. Changed later on, but that was after she ended the friendship.”
“With Potter?”
“No, Snape,” snorted Sirius. “Joined this snotty little gang in fourth year, went around playing jokes on muggle-borns. James loathed them. Everyone did, they were miserable.”
He fidgeted with his signet ring. “It was a different time.”
“Not for the rest of us,” said Sirius. “Anyway, James was a bit of a ponce, but he was handsome and clever and good at quidditch, and we all were ponces, back then. The other thing was, later on, Snape had a thing for Lily—”
“A thing?”
“Yeah, properly obsessed. She was the only one his little gang never went after. Not that she ever asked for it. She hated them all, except Severus, which — they had this weird kindred spirits bit, both ripping good at Potions, were real cozy. For a while, anyway. Then she got sick of him being a bigoted shit, and he wasn’t all too keen on self-improvement, so she ditched him and started palling around with us.”
Draco was silent for a long time. From where he sat he could hear the rain lashing the rooftops of Hogsmeade, leaving a soft thin film where it met the gutters, diffusing the cords of smoke that lifted from each chimney. His heart thumped dully against the cage of his chest, hard and decadently slow. It was an empty landscape, a cold one.
“You’re scared as hell,” said Sirius, like it was some sort of goddamn insight.
“What.”
“I shouldn’t have been so flippant, earlier. When I was your age, I already hated my family, and I had another one waiting for me. I had sisters, Mary and Marlene, and Dory, and Lily, they kept me straight… I had James, my brother, there aren’t even words for James and me… I even had Remus. But you’ve got a longer fall.” He clapped the side of Draco’s shoulder, retreating before Draco’s withering stare could force it to. “And you don’t trust them to catch you. Even though to look at them, they’re desperate to try.”
“I don’t need rescuing.”
Sirius ran a hand through his matted hair, through the wet flaps of black rope. “No? You happy, then?”
“Are you?”
“Sure am.”
“Well, so am I. I don’t have your problems. I would never run away from my family.”
“Even if they hurt you?”
“My mother would rather die.”
“Fine. Likelier case. What if she went after Harry?” Sirius cocked his head. “What about Hermione?”
He scowled and turned his face into the rain.
No one was permitted to hurt Hermione. She had to be alright for the rest of the world to make sense. She was a cornerstone of the comprehensible universe. But it was hard to say so without outright saying, Hermione is the cornerstone of the comprehensible universe, and sounding like a vapid useless prat.
“I wouldn’t allow it.”
“Yeah? And how’d you do that, tiny? You’re making all this noise about protecting people, but ten minutes ago you walked out on them, called me a blood traitor, and jinxed me — and all that after we’d had a nice chat over tea. Hermione’s a muggle-born. What happens when you remember how you’re supposed to feel about those?”
“Do not make the mistake of believing I have ever forgotten.” His tone was so clipped he almost bit his tongue. “There are things I cannot do.”
“Rubbish.”
“Black—”
“You can. I know,” said Sirius, “because I’ve done it.”
“I don’t know how many times I have to drill this through your thick skull, but I’m not you. I love my family.”
“Yeah?” said Sirius. “And who’s that, exactly? Two disgraces, a dead boy, a mad bloodthirsty bint, and the four dead old prats who raised the wretched crop? Or your dear old dad, rotten piece of work that he was?”
“My father was a great man.”
“He was a miserly old shit who hated muggles so much he lost the chance to watch his son grow up,” said Sirius flippantly. “And he might’ve disagreed with me, but that’s tough for him, because I’m the one still here. And he’s not. Come to think of it, it’s probably the best thing he could possibly have done for you.”
“You are asking me to desecrate the memory of my father.”
“Dead men can’t be proud of you,” said Sirius.
It lodged like glass in his throat.
“Fuck off.”
“Lucius Malfoy is never going to tell you he loves you, kid.” It was the brutal unkindness of a Healer cleaning a wound with salt. “Not never, not ever, not once. He can’t. Might be he wouldn’t, if he knew you, but that doesn’t matter. Because he’s dead. Worms know that man better than you do. And you’re going to go in there and fuck up the life you’ve got without him, and for what? A fistful of leprechaun gold?”
“Fuck off!”
“You’re butchering your own happiness over the opinions of a corpse,” said Sirius, ruthlessly cold. “You deserved to have someone tell you.”
Draco pushed off the hill and looked at the vast, endless braid of hills, crested with distant streaks of rain. The size of the moors and the mountains impressed itself on him as it never had, the whole empty world rolling out at his feet, making even the grand vaults of Hogwarts Castle seem small. He’d thought that coming to Hogwarts would make him feel closer to his father, as the place that made him the man he was, and that the same mold would have shaped him into an image of his like. Another turn of the wheel — another Lord Malfoy. Another white-haired boy with a ring and a sneer.
Which was a pissant child’s wishful dream, because he had never felt farther from his father in his life. He was wretched with the understanding that for all his best efforts, he only ever seemed to move farther away.
There were a hundred thousand things about himself that he couldn’t ask anyone to understand.
“Alright,” said Sirius carefully. “On consideration. Shouldn’t have said that. That was… that was a bit tough. But seriously—”
“If you say my father’s name again,” he said, “it will be the last thing you say.”
Sirius eyed him. Abruptly, he snorted.
“Shame you never met your Uncle Reg,” he said. “Would’ve got along like boggarts in a cupboard, you two.”
Draco made an irritated noise and turned his head away.
Sirius worked his mouth for a moment.
“I’ll say this, and then I’ll shut up,” he said, apropos of nothing. I never met a pureblood happy enough to justify what they’ll ask you to do. Maybe you have. Maybe you don’t care. That’s not my business. But you’d be the first in my time.”
“Look who’s preaching about happiness. You’re a penniless convict living on the run with a werewolf and a hippogriff.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Some days I can’t believe my own luck.”
And his smile was a terrible little heartbreak of a beam, so sincere, so utterly unadorned with irony in the least, that it burned to look at.
How dare he be happy with his miserable lot. How dare he look at Draco like he pitied him, like there was anything in Draco’s situation that Sirius Black had to fear.
Sirius shook something out of his pocket. It was a white box with a blue crest, and he had tapped out half of a cigarette before he lifted his head into the rain and frowned. “Bugger,” he said. “Forgot.”
Draco rooted in his pocket and withdrew a silver lighter, inlaid with ornate filigree. The flame sprang out and flickered brightly, despite the coursing rain.
“Bang-on,” said Sirius appreciatively. “That’s a neat trick. Where’d you pick it up?”
He could have laughed.
“It was my father’s,” he said. “In whose possession it was almost certainly never lowered to this purpose, so hurry, before I change my mind.”
A little chuckle. “If you believe that, then you definitely didn’t know your father like I did.”
“Right. Or I can put this away, and you can light that off the friction from the nice wank you seem to be having—”
Sirius laughed, free and heartily, and shuffled over to light his cigarette on the silver cradle. Then he offered Draco the box.
“Thought you said I was too young.”
He shrugged. “Eh. What’ll you do? Tell your mum?”
Draco snorted and took one. He lit it with his father’s lighter — the rain delayed success until the third or fourth attempt — and drew smoke in a thin stinging column down his throat. Warmth bloomed in his lungs like a blazing coal.
When he exhaled, the smoke diffused into the rain with a bloom of grey on silver.
Sirius smoked half of his, and then tossed it out in the brush. “I’m going in,” he said. “Give you a bit of peace. Come in when you can.”
Draco said nothing. He ignored, too, the soft little sigh that Sirius gave as he clapped Draco on the back, and then marched up the wet path to the house, his boots splashing in the dirt.
He smoked until the nubbin was stinging at his fingers, and then flicked it out. Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked back to the castle, alone, through a forested path that was silent save for the violent dirge of the rain.
-Never in history has there been a simple relationship between two sons of the House of Black.
-I’m interested by our capacity, as people, for self-persuasion. Not even delusion, just… the importance that labels have to human beings, and how we’ll labor to avoid them even as we completely fulfill it by any standard, that’s weird, right? Because so long as you don’t have the label, it’s fine, you’re safe from the consequences. Maybe people won’t notice, if you don’t say the name.
-At a point, that becomes unsustainable, of course.
-Something something that point when the personal being political means you have to make personal choices. Tfw your boundless faith in the righteousness and goodness of another human being means you have to reckon with the possibility of your own damnation. Or something. Maybe.
-(tfw you are hermione granger and you make a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter son) jk jk
-Shoutout to softkombucha, who has so kindly made several pieces of art for this fic and also goes hard for the marauders; sorry about the angst! short king james potter for life.
-Shoutout also to mary_sue_apologist. you know what for. insanely good.
-can i be real, beloveds? can i be brutally honest? this arc right here is my favorite part of a love story. it’s the point when the match hits the pilot light. it’s my favorite to read and so far it has been my favorite to write.
-i really do love draco with my whole heart. and i am going to give him the absolute worst time. it’s going to be great. i swear.
-as may be clear, I’m back to having fun again. thank you so much for people who reached out on tumblr and on here to reassure me about The Process. you all deserve the world or at least an exceptionally nice box of swiss chocolates where all of them have the good fillings.
-the next chapter: prepare for more castle intrigue, amateur spycraft, and the largest action sequence since the First Task in “Secrets of the Undercroft.”
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