Chapter 56: They Shall Not Grow Old
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Harry stayed in the Hospital Wing for a day, and then he moved out of the dorms. Professor McGonagall helped him carry his bags down to the Shrieking Shack, where Sirius and Remus were waiting for him. He spent the last week of class skipping school and living in the Shrieking Shack, where Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey would come down to visit in the afternoons, and various Weasleys could drop by through the Floo grate as they pleased. If the appearance of Sirius Black, wanted murderer and fugitive from the law, disturbed any of them, they resolved it behind closed doors with Dumbledore and Sirius himself. Remus was welcomed by all, and spent fifteen minutes locked in the dead heat of a hug with Molly while she sobbed an ocean into one of his shirts.
At school, Harry’s absence was filled with rumors of its cause. It was in one sense fortunate that the last week of exams was a series of silent periods and study halls, not much opportunity for conversation, and though Dumbledore offered to let all three of them to skip the tests, as Harry had — and Ron accepted — Hermione put her hand up and became the first person in Hogwarts history to beg permission to sit an exam.
Draco sat them, but only because they were easy, and he wanted everyone else to know it.
Most people, he noticed, were skirting him in the corridors, avoiding his eyes. Whispers trailed him, as did their less common cousin, which was questions. He could blame no one for their curiosity about what had happened when the maze went down. He could blame everyone for the delusion that they were entitled to ask him about it.
It would have been easy for McGonagall to make a killing on House points, especially for the five minutes that Zacharias Smith spent floating up-side down over the breakfast table when he asked why Harry had gotten to “lark off” after the Tournament. But she ordered Smith to class and instead gave him a detention that was to be served out on Saturday afternoon in the Shrieking Shack.
“Thanks, professor,” he muttered.
“It is unorthodox to thank professors for giving detentions,” she sniffed, but then she touched his shoulder on the way out of the hall, and murmured: “It was well done, Mr. Malfoy.”
He doubted she was talking about Smith.
Which was worse than if she’d yelled at him. Kindness from her and other members of the staff did nothing to calm him, and in fact made him feel surreal, like he’d tripped into a wonderland where everything was cotton and rainbows and glass. It made him even more terrified about what would happen when he’d left it. What was the point of this pretending? The world was over. The Dark Lord had returned, and everyone was fucked.
Professor Snape didn’t return from wherever Dumbledore sent him by the end of the week. Potions exams were proctored by the Bloody Baron, who whisked up and down the aisles, cackling whenever he saw a student struggling with an answer; Defense Against the Dark Arts, whose professor had been transferred to St. Mungo’s for advanced tissue damage, was finished out by Dumbledore himself.
Cassius Warrington was admitted to a private ward in the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey spent three very long nights attempting to dispel what she called a “remarkably resilient” Dark curse. Flora Carrow could be found floating in the hallways near the east wing, often crying, and snapping at anyone who tried to help her.
In Harry’s absence, life was quieter. It was also worse. He spent sunlit afternoons reading in the window, orchestrated by the soft etch of Hermione’s quill on the desk beside him. He lost four in five games of wizard’s chess a day with Ron, who had become so unmercifully bored that he started to make up new variations on the rules, duplicating the chess board, playing in three dimensions, giving pieces new powers and ranges of motion, and other modifications that Draco enjoyed puzzling out the enchantments for while Ron mused on the strategic possibilities. By the week’s end they had developed spins on blitz chess that would make Ernie Macmillan, captain of the Hogwarts chess team, soil his trousers.
And still, it wasn’t enough. On nights when sleep eluded him, he would creep out of bed, unlatch the window, and draw his Nimbus from its case stored under his bed; and there, stepping out into the cool rich air of a cloudless summer’s night, he would fly long circles from Gryffindor to Ravenclaw to the Astronomy Tower, pushing until his thighs burned and his chest hurt from breathing, and float there with one foot barely brushing the tallest spire, watching the moon’s reflection on the lake spill like cream from a pale glass.
Dreams brought narrow corridors, hedges that closed in on him as he ran, bone-white masks that never flinched, and green lights that always found their target. In the worst ones, there was screaming — sometimes his, sometimes his mother’s, and sometimes a thin high girl’s scream that he would have known at any distance. He woke up fumbling for his wand and a curse that he knew with dreadful certainty would be too slow, sick from panic. Once, he found himself halfway up the stairs to the girls’ dorms before he realized what he was doing, and went to get his broomstick.
Hermione started drinking coffee in the mornings. Dark circles were her constant accessories. She was sharp as always in class, but tired quickly in the afternoons; when, as she sometimes did, she fell asleep during their afternoon study halls, her head wilting gradually and unwillingly onto the desk in front of her — or memorably, once, his shoulder — he didn’t wake her.
On some level he was afraid of what would happen when they left Hogwarts. For himself, of course — the people they had to fear could breach the Manor walls, and in fact had already done it, once. But he had his mother. He had the Manor, which was a fortress, properly used. Nobody stood watch at the Grangers’ door. Their house wasn’t even warded. And yet Hermione was intransigent to the suggestion that she spend the summer somewhere else, like the Weasleys’. The last serious discussion of the idea escalated to a shouting row, and that more or less put paid to it.
He wanted to inquire if Dumbledore could do something about it, but the headmaster didn’t seem to have a free moment to ask: when he wasn’t in class, he was pacing the halls, usually accompanied by a man or two in Ministry robes, discussing something in tones that always seemed dour and on the knife-edge of becoming uncivil.
There were things happening, somewhere, in closed rooms, and behind locked doors. Everyone knew it, but nobody knew what they were. Daphne’s father revealed nothing except to warn her away from “the Potter boy,” a loophole that she gamely exploited to continue sharing a room with Lavender and Parvati. Pansy, meanwhile, had withdrawn from school the day after the Tournament, and had supposedly taken her exams from home.
On Saturday afternoon, three fourth years crossed the lawns under a sweltering profusion of sunshine to take the passage under the Whomping Willow, and emerged into the Shrieking Shack.
Inhabitation had transformed it. The windows had been cleaned and repaired, filling the living room with summer’s yellow dust-strained glow, and the furniture had been resuscitated with stitching. Fuzzy throw pillows and blankets heaped high on the sofas. Stacks of books tumbled sideways and over side tables for want of a shelf. Flowers bloomed promiscuously from a legion of vases, white roses and white lilies and white tulips and ferns laced with tiny clouds of baby’s breath, bereavement flowers, like a wild meadow leached of color. Harry usually sat under a blanket on the sofa, reading Quidditch for Seekers or One Thousand and One Tricks For Broomsticks, or studying the gnarled chessboard on the ottoman, while Remus or Sirius puttered around in the kitchen and pretended not to be watching him.
When the three of them came in he smiled, and it was very nearly not sad at all.
Ron came over, glanced at the chessboard, and moved a knight. “Check.”
“Ah, no! Really? I’ve worked on that for days.”
“Bad luck, mate. I’m not going easy on you because you’re bedridden.”
“I’m not bedridden,” Harry informed him, peeling back the throw blanket.
“No? Just lazy, then.”
“Oi! I wanted to go flying, but Remus said it wasn’t a good idea. They want me where they can see me.” He checked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I think they’re worried I’m going to do something reckless.”
“That wouldn’t be like you at all, would it,” said Draco, and dropped himself languidly into one of the armchairs. Hermione drifted into the room, lingering to inspect one of the books on the ottoman, and then perched on the arm, where her ankle slightly brushed his leg.
She’d been touchier, this last week of classes. She sat closer to him at meals, where a shift of her knee or elbow could find him, and she’d made a habit of walking with him in hallways — not that she hadn’t, before, but now she would take his arm or his hand sometimes, coming down stairs, the little flourishes of etiquette she’d always called frippery before.
It was for comfort, he supposed. It didn’t bother him, except that it made it hard to focus on anything.
Ron leaned down to snag one of the tarts on a platter beside Harry’s afternoon tea.
“Hagrid,” warned Harry, too late. Ron’s teeth sank into the confection and stayed there.
“He came to visit?” said Hermione, flipping through one of Remus’s books.
“Yeah, to say goodbye. He’s going away, after the end of term,” he said. “He’s not coming back to teach next year.”
Ron gave a sad cry, muffled by glue.
Harry looked at Hermione. Then at Draco.
“Oh, no—”
“I mean, that’s awful.”
“I do hope he’ll stay as groundskeeper.”
“The lawns never looked better.”
“And of course it’s sad, he’s a dear friend—”
“A reassuring constant, in these trying times. A large, hairy, constant.”
Harry snorted. “Alright,” he said. “No, he’ll be coming back, but not for a while. Dumbledore’s sending him to go liaison with the giants. He’s worried about them siding with… you know.”
“Voldemort?”
“D’n sheh ih,” Ron warned, and Hermione rolled her eyes.
“They will, you know,” said Draco. “The giants.”
“Dumbledore thinks they might not, though.”
“But they will. They were better off with the Dark Lord than they ever were with the Ministry. Unless Dumbledore can promise to let them wander around eating people as they like, he’s got nothing in his arsenal that will compare.” Draco slouched into his armchair, freshly dispirited.
“Why do you call him that?” said Hermione, curiously. “The Dark Lord? Instead of—”
“Hr mnee!”
“—instead of You-Know-Who.”
“It’s what he is, isn’t it? It’s a title, like anything else.”
“But he’s not lord of anything,” she said. “He’s just a man.”
He wasn’t. He was an immortal creature of Dark magic. But he couldn’t tell them that, and wouldn’t have wanted to, even if he could. What use was letting them know the case was hopeless?
Hermione was watching him keenly. He shrugged and crossed his legs, removing his ankle from hers. She thinned her lips and folded her arms.
“Oh, Hermione,” said Harry suddenly, reaching for the ottoman. “Here’s something I found — this’ll cheer you up! Did you hear that Rita Skeeter got fired?”
Hermione paused. “Why, no,” she said, in an odd voice. “That’s excellent news. Did her editor finally happen to read one of her articles?”
It perturbed Draco that she was so calm. The downfall of a sworn enemy was the sort of occasion that ought to be met with drinking and dancing, and declarations of one’s eternal glory, etc., etc.
“Better. It’s right here,” announced Harry, rustling open the newspaper. “‘Former Prophet staff writer Rita Skeeter was arrested yesterday on charges of operating as an unregistered animagus. The Improper Use of Magic Office, unusually, took her into custody the previous morning, when the Office received an unmarked parcel by owl post, containing within it’ — listen to this! — ‘containing within it the animagus form of Ms. Skeeter, a horsefly, entrapped in a jar.’ ” He crowed. “In a jar! It goes on: ‘Representatives found that the jar had been perforated and stocked with foodstuffs for the unfortunate Ms. Skeeter, suggesting that she had been in captivity for some time. The identity of the culprit remains unknown.’”
Ron gave a cheer.
“It’s a shame that owl post doesn’t use return addresses,” said Hermione. She turned a page of the book. “The muggle government would’ve been able to trace the sender.”
Ron pried his teeth free and spoke thickly through a crust of fudge. “Who cares? Ding dong, the witch is dead!”
Her lip quirked. “Where’d you get that from?”
“I dunno, I heard Dad say it when Thatcher resigned. Anyway, that’s great! No more adventures in newsprint, eh?” He elbowed Harry.
Harry smiled thinly and tossed the paper back on the ottoman. It fell with the front page up, and Draco could read it by tilting his head.
MURDER AND MADNESS: HARRY POTTER SOLE WITNESS IN SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF BULGARIAN SEEKER. Column two: A CRIME OF PASSION? AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE RIVALRY BETWEEN KRUM AND POTTER. Under the fold, top line: KRUM KILLED, BUT POTTER PROFITS: MINISTRY AWARDS ONE THOUSAND GALLEONS TO ILLEGITIMATE CHAMPION.
None of the bylines were Rita Skeeter.
Hermione cleared her throat and surreptitiously flicked her wand at it. It flipped over to an advertisement for broomstick polish, in which Oliver Wood, decked in a Pud U jersey, wielded a keeper’s mit and a maniacal smile.
She was being quite reserved about the situation, for someone who had more to loathe about Skeeter than any of them. He might have expected a little fanfare, at least. ‘Reserved’ was not generally a word apt to describe Hermione.
Abruptly, Harry grimaced and reached for a chipped brown mug on the table. He finished the dregs of it and wiped his mouth without much pleasure. Ron picked it up and made a face at whatever he smelled in it.
“You’ve got to stop letting Sirius make your tea, mate.”
He laughed gratefully. “It’s Pain Relief Potion. And lemonade.”
Draco checked the time. “It’s ten to five,” he remarked. “Early in the day for sedatives, no? I’m sure Granger would be glad to go over the History of Magic exam, if you need rest. Ow.”
Her foot swung back, guileless. Tempestuous creature.
“It’s watered down. Pomfrey says I should take some whenever my scar starts hurting.”
“Does it often?” said Hermione.
Harry shrugged.
“Is it bad?”
He shrugged again.
They lapsed into reflection.
Remus came in from the kitchen and leaned on the back of Harry’s sofa. “Plotting and scheming for next year, you lot?” Harry craned his neck up and grinned at him; Remus gave his hair a ruffling that would have rendered it disastrous if nature hadn’t seen to it already. “What’s next? Occamies, lethifolds? Basilisks?”
“Worse. O.W.L.s,” said Ron.
“Oh, you’ll do all right. Defense Against the Dark Arts, at least, you’ve got locked down. ‘What are the properties of a werewolf’?” He winked at Harry. “Clumsy… bad cook… fond of cardigans…’”
Harry laughed. Remus visibly relaxed.
“You’re not a bad cook.”
“Lucky for you, I don’t believe you. Dinner’s coming from the Three Broomsticks, what’s your pleasure? Oh, no, hang on — it’s the Closing Feast, isn’t it? You’ll want to eat at the castle.”
There was a beat.
“Remus,” said Hermione, with as much softness as she could — which still wasn’t perhaps all that much — “the funeral’s tonight.”
This landed on Remus like a bird dropping. He screwed up his face and tried to make the most of it, but it was clearly not his preferred forecast.
“Ah,” he said. “You’ll all be going, then.”
“Yes. Dumbledore arranged a Portkey for us. I don’t know why we can’t just Floo.”
“Floo networks don’t cross international lines,” said Draco. “It’s regulated.”
“Why don’t we table foreign policy,” said Remus. “Harry — are you alright to go? It’s a long way from home, and Sirius and I can’t come with you.”
Harry shrugged. “I’ll be back by midnight,” he said. “Anyway, saves me having to go to the Closing Feast. I dunno what I’d do there, besides have people stare at me. Ask me whether I’ve really gone loony. Or what Voldemort’s like, if they happen to believe me. Bet Colin would ask me to draw him a sketch.” He laughed forcedly.
Hermione cleared her throat. “They wouldn’t…”
But she could convince no one, and seemed to realize it, because she left the sentence dangling there.
Remus didn’t seem at ease with Harry going, but whatever his doubts, he swallowed them. The door creaked, and a dog came panting through the doors, shaking sweat from its coat.
“Kill you to do that outside, would it?” Remus called.
Sirius transformed and swaggered in from the foyer, holding a bundle full of something dark and fragrant. “And deny myself the pleasure of your sweet reminders? Wouldn’t do. Hello, you lot. Hermione, Ron.” He nodded. “Draco.”
“Hello, Sirius!”
“Wotcher, mate.”
“Black.”
“Harry’s going to the funeral,” said Remus.
Sirius paused. “Well, ’course he is,” he said gruffly, after a moment. “Got to. Right thing to do.”
“Yes, but it’s quite far—”
“We’ll be there,” said Ron, folding his arms.
“It’s just one night,” said Harry. “I’ll be back before we leave tomorrow.”
“Before you all leave?” said Hermione sharply. “Are you going with him?”
Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at Sirius. Sirius smiled.
“Dumbledore managed to dig up an old safe house for me,” he said. “He’s been secret-keeper for the past fifteen years, and he’s letting me take a loan on it. He reckons with a good Fidelius, we’ll be safe there — and Harry, too.”
“No,” said Hermione, alarmed. “There’s a blood protection, through Harry’s aunt, you can’t take him, it’ll break it—”
“When Voldemort took my blood, the protection broke,” said Harry quietly. “So he can kill me now. But that means I don’t have to stay with the Dursleys anymore.”
This was delivered in a tone of reassurance and relief. Only to Harry Potter could being hunted by a violent demigod be an acceptable sacrifice.
“But — but — where are you going? Can we visit?”
“Oh, you can!” said Harry eagerly. “It’s cracking, Hermione, we’re going to be in London, not far from you — you and I can see each other every weekend, it’ll be grand—”
Draco twitched. Wouldn’t that be a lovely summer they’d have, popping in and out of each other’s living rooms, having a ball of a time palling around the city. Just like the Burrow, wouldn’t it be, and then everyone would’ve met the Grangers but him.
“—and Ron, you’ll get to come up and we’ll have you, it’s going to be mad— you’re welcome too, Draco—”
“Give us the address, and I’ll check the datebook,” said Draco, polishing his fingernails. “I haven’t much free time in the summers, but we’ll try a visit if it’s convenient.”
“Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place,” said Sirius, grinning.
Draco stared at him.
“You’re joking.”
“Am not.”
“But it’s not yours.”
“Is too.”
“Isn’t. You were disinherited, if I recall. Usually, that means no inheritance, either in cash or real estate.”
“Not from Mummy Dearest,” he said smugly, “but Twelve wasn’t hers to give away. Pollux bequeathed it to Uncle Alphard.”
“Who was also disinherited—”
“After mon Grandpére kicked the bucket, I’m afraid. Not that it mattered during the War, he was off sleeping with half the blokes in Manhattan, but when I got out of Azkaban, I came to find out he left it to me — one last ‘go stick it to them, kid,’ from one disappointment to another. Bloody inspirational, really. Anyway, it’s not part of the Black estate proper, anymore.”
“What,” said Ron, “it’s some kind of mansion, is that it?”
“No,” said Draco.
“More of a manor,” said Sirius. “It’s this big silly townhouse with lots of frills and unnecessary rooms. Harry, you’d love it, you can fly your broomstick through the drawing rooms—”
“Which he won’t, Sirius.”
“—so long as no one prissy and boring is watching, you’ve got to be careful, there. But there’s loads to explore…”
They led off in a grand discussion of summer plans, and he watched Harry drift into the dreamy haze of excitement for the months to come. And then he realized what Dumbledore was doing, letting him leave the Dursleys, after three successive summers of insisting on a return. It wasn’t just that the charm had expired; frankly, he didn’t know if it had ever been. He’d never heard of a blood protection that depended on residence with one’s aunt.
Harry was being hidden.
Grimmauld Place was a war safehouse. That meant defensive charms, wards, fortifications. It meant that Sirius, as the adult master of the house, held control of the manor with household magic. Real household magic, like the Manor, or Knotscliff. It meant that no one was coming in unless Sirius Black wanted them to.
It also meant Dumbledore didn’t think the muggle world was safe for him anymore. And he was willing to risk sacrificing Harry’s blood protection for that purpose.
And Hermione was walking right back into it, her head high.
He was going to be ill.
The conversation stalled when he stood up, scraping his chair back.
“Black.” He jerked his head at the kitchen. “A word.”
Sirius sauntered in after him, sharing the heat of four curious pairs of eyes at their backs.
He secured the kitchen door and cast Muffliato before he spoke. Sirius leaned against the counter, arms folded.
“Dumbledore expects the first attack soon, then?” he said brusquely, without preamble.
Sirius exhaled slowly, turning his head aside.
“It’s possible,” he said quietly.
“How possible? Likely possible, or known?”
“Depends on how much Nott and Wormtail have been able to do since last year. We’re waiting on intelligence from Snape.”
A small warm thread of relief unspooled down his spine. “So Snape’s alive, then.”
“As far as we can tell,” Sirius muttered, without much happiness. “Trying to worm his way back into his master’s good books, and expected to have great success, no surprises.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “He’s risking his life for you, you know.”
“He’s risking his life because Dumbledore’s got him by the bollocks.”
“It doesn’t — never mind. It doesn’t matter.” He folded his arms. “How much does Potter know about what’s happened?”
Sirius set his jaw and gave him a hard look.
“Nothing? You’ve told him nothing?”
“Not by choice.”
“You haven’t told him that he’s about to be hunted by the most dangerous men alive? Do you think it’ll be any difficulty for him to guess? Not to mention this smacks of duplicity, incidentally — he thinks you’re taking him in because you’re adopting him, because you’re his godfather—”
“We are adopting him,” snapped Sirius. “I am his godfather. Harry belongs at home. With his family.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Why isn’t Dumbledore letting him stay at Hogwarts?”
Something flashed across Sirius’s face. He opened his mouth, but with a sickening pang, Draco answered his own question.
“Because he doesn’t think Hogwarts is safe, does he?”
“It’s not—”
“The Ministry’s been sending men around. Do you know anything about that?”
“Dumbledore’s been in negotiations with Runcorn,” said Sirius quietly. “That’s all I know, and it’s all I could tell you, even if it wasn’t.”
He was quiet. He twisted his signet ring back and forth, grounding pressure.
“I didn’t know Uncle Alphard was dead,” he said.
Sirius shrugged. “Neither did I,” he said. “Think one of the dementors ate my funeral invitation.”
There was a pause; and then they both laughed, a little, at the ridiculousness of it. At the ridiculousness of the world, that let the two of them stand in the kitchen together, discussing what they discussed, knowing what they knew, and didn’t combust from intolerance.
When you were flying into a dive, there was always a moment before you crashed when it was still possible to pull up — the last possible moment when you could even out, and still fly away free — and the tricky point was that you never knew exactly where it was. So you could keep going, in theory, well past it. If you didn’t notice in time. But there was still some distance between that point in the ground, and so you could go sailing on for a few more dizzying seconds, and it was only when you tried to pull up that you’d realize you were going to crash.
Which was all to say that his current feelings weren’t unfamiliar. Asphyxiating, perhaps; nauseating, certainly; but not unfamiliar.
When a wizard died, there were certain customs to observe. Draco knew these customs very well. He had already done them once.
Funerals took place at sunset. At seven o’clock, they reported to Dumbledore’s office, and traveled by Portkey to the embassy in Sofia, where they were hastened through a series of low-ceilinged bureaucratic rooms and then handed another Portkey, which deposited them on a grassy hillside sloping down to a riverbank. Through a crest of poplar trees, a river glittered under a harsh, slanting sunset, so bright it hurt the eye. Deep shadows striped the grass. A squat brick cottage sat under the arm of the hill, so low its roof sat almost level with the slope, with deep-set windows and a single lonesome chimney.
Dumbledore wore robes of pure white, hemmed in gold, and a fine gold wizard’s hat with tassels and a gold bulb at the tip. His beard was groomed neatly and tied with a gold ribbon. It was a touch flashy, in Draco’s opinion, but presentable enough.
He’d opted for subtlety. His proper funeral things were locked in some closet at the Manor, but he’d found in one of his deeper trunks a black double-breasted coat with gold bars embroidered onto the cuffs, which matched the metallic glint of the buttons. It was a militant sort of thing, terribly out of fashion, but he doubted the Krums would judge. Harry came in his dress robes; Ron wore his uniform, but he’d Transfigured a gold handkerchief that sat in his breast pocket, and they’d both combed their hair, which showed if nothing else that they were living in unprecedented times.
Hermione wore a black dress that fell wide around the shoulders, though she hid it with a gray jumper. A gold pin, which she confessed came from Lavender, and a ribbon in her hair, though its grasp on her curls seemed temporary at best. Someone had done her makeup. He suspected Daphne’s signature in the flick of eyeliner.
They were the only people of Viktor’s age. The oldest after them were the other members of the Bulgarian quidditch team, who filed in at the back of the glade with a quarter to the ceremony. They all wore quidditch uniforms dyed in black and gold.
Viktor’s parents wore distant expressions, their responses slow if given at all. The only time they seemed to wake was when Dumbledore arrived and produced a bouquet of lilies for Viktor’s mother, who seized his hand and began speaking frantically in Bulgarian, and refused to let go until her husband dragged her away. Dumbledore made no effort to free himself, and watched the pair of them stumble off with a sadness that was deeper than words.
He leaned down to speak in Hermione’s ear. “What did she say?”
Hermione twitched. “I didn’t get all of it,” she whispered. “I don’t… it was something, something, ‘great wizard,’ and — ‘return,’ I think.”
“‘Return’ as in ‘leave’?”
“No. Sorry. Return, transitive,” she said, her voice roughening. “As in — return something. Return him.”
“‘Bring him back.’”
“Yes,” she said, and her voice broke, and she fumbled furiously for her handkerchief. Ron put his hand on her shoulder and offered her his.
They were not the youngest guests, however. That fell to Viktor’s brother, a dark-haired boy called Ivan, who did not say one word but scowled at everyone as if prepared to swing at them.
Igor Karkaroff wasn’t there. No one knew where he was, but Draco could take a guess.
At sunset, four members of the Bulgarian team bore forth the coffin on their shoulders. It was plain wood, lacquered, with a spray of golden roses lain across the top. It was placed on an altar near the riverbank, under an arch woven of elder branches. Dumbledore lifted his wand high, and a gold carpet unfurled over the lawn, where the guests knelt. Hermione lagged, watching the ceremony in disorientation, until Draco tugged her down.
The river rolled past without noticing them. The chatter of birds threw singsong echoes down through the thatched green pergola of the trees, among the slender chinks of sunlight and the weeping wind. Viktor’s parents huddled together near the front, not weeping.
Hermione leaned into Draco’s ear.
“Are we—”
He put his finger to his lips. She fell silent.
By and by, his knees started to hurt. He’d forgotten that, from his father’s funeral. He hadn’t noticed much about it at the time.
When the coins of sunlight on the lawn had closed, and a dusky film of twilight had settled over the river, lights gleamed to life in the canopy. Viktor’s mother stood up on wobbly legs, staggered to the coffin, placed one hand on it, and began to speak.
It was in Bulgarian, so he understood nothing, but it wasn’t necessary. There were only so many kinds of eulogy in the world. Nor was it a surprise when she started to cry, broke off, and went back to kneel with her husband.
Then Ivan Krum stood up and went to place his hand on the coffin, where he withdrew a piece of parchment from his pocket, and read slowly, in a thick, lilting accent that cloaked surprisingly strong English.
“Good evenink,” he said stiffly. “Thank you for coming to celebrate v— with. Me and. My family.” He looked up, glowered furtively at the audience, and returned to his script. “I vvv will speak. Briefly. About. My brother.”
Hermione tapped him on the knee. He glanced at her, and she tapped her lip curiously. He shook his head, and nodded at the coffin.
“My brother’s name was Viktor,” said Ivan, struggling on. “He liked to fly.”
His face crumpled, and he lowered the paper — but rallying, he lifted it and continued.
“Many people thought his flying was good. Some even called it beautiful. This made him happy.” He cleared his throat and brandished the paper like a shield. “He was fifteen when he was rec… rec… rec-ruited. But by then, he had been — flying — for many years. He would practice it. Here.” He pointed at the earth. “He would get up. Very early. To fly over this water. And would not come down until the sky looked like this.” He reversed his finger’s direction into the sky. “He always doing this. So he is. Never helping. With chores.”
He glared at the crowd. After a moment, Dumbledore gave a soft, obliging laugh, and Ivan visibly relaxed.
“But I ask him, sometime: Viktor. Why do you — do this? Why so much? There are many good f-flyers who do not do so much.” Ivan flipped a page, fumbled, and shuffled them together. “And he… he says to me: ‘you are asking a bad question.’”
Hermione’s breathing came short and raspy in her throat. He passed her his handkerchief.
“I am saying. Okay. Big brother. You are so smart. Tell me, then. What is the right question? And he says.” Ivan wet his lips. “‘I do not fly like this, ‘so much,’ or ‘so little.’ I fly until I have flown enough.’ I say: Okay, smart guy. So for big man you, there is never no enough? Is that point? He says, ‘No, beetroot.’ And he hits me on head, like this. Paf! And he says: ‘Of course there is enough. Enough means that today I fly farther than yesterday. Enough means I fly farther tomorrow than I have today. And though—” He wet his lips again, and he was struggling with it much, now: “And though each day, farther is only inches, in a week — in a year — in fifty years — I will look behind me, and see one thousand leagues of sky.”
He closed his eyes, and then he was crying, somehow, without ever having started.
“And I will see what no one has ever seen,” he said. “And the sky will know me, when I—”
He gasped, wrestled back some groundswell of emotion, and swallowed his breath. “‘And the sky will know me,’ he said, ‘when I come home.’”
Ivan crumpled up his pages and shoved them in his pocket. “The sky has never loved anyone like it did my brother,” he said, “and it never will again. He is gone home.”
He quickly sat back down. His father put his hand on the back of his neck, but Ivan shrugged him off.
Hermione was crying silently into his handkerchief. He could see the rigid lines of her shoulders as she tried to keep herself still.
A few minutes passed, and then Dumbledore stood up. He passed silently to the coffin, and placed his hand on the weathered wood.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. “There is much that I would like to say to you all tonight, all of it commemorating the loss of a fine young person, whom I did not have the pleasure of knowing half so well as I would like. He should be here with us. He was a good and loyal son; a proud brother; an exceptional athlete, and one of the greatest wizards of his generation. All this, and much more, I could tell you; but I find that in times of grief, I can do no better than the poets, whose magic grants them an immortality so perfect even the greatest wizard cannot rival it.”
Draco tilted his head, ears pricked. That couldn’t have been accidental.
Dumbledore closed his eyes, and then spoke as if he were reading from something.
“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
He opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said softly. And he knelt again.
The ceremony came to a close when the light was almost gone. Viktor’s parents came to the front, and his mother passed her wand over the coffin, murmuring a spell in Bulgarian. The coffin transformed from dark wood to a solid cask of pure white marble, veined with black and gold, and her husband’s spell engraved an epitaph in Cyrilic over the front. It was seamless; the hinges and the crevice under the lid had disappeared in its transformation.
Another sweep of her wand gouged a cavity in the earth below the casket, and together, they levitated it deep into the ground. When it settled with a low thump into the bottom of the well. What came next was not dirt, but items: his mother emptied armfuls of what looked like baby toys, his father a collection of books, and Ivan came forward with a long, state-of-the-art racing broomstick — scuffed slightly at the back, because its former rider liked to sit low in the saddle — and tipped it into the grave.
Then they piled the dirt back on, folding the earth in with long sweeps of their wands, and the grave sat fresh like a wound upon the lawn.
By and by, one of the quidditch players at the back of the lawn raised her wand into the sky. She barked, “Viktor,” and lit her wand. Lumos flared into the fresh dark hole of the night sky.
Dumbledore followed her example. His blazed brightest of all, casting a fine white beam through the trees, like an inverted pillar of sunlight.
Draco pulled out his wand and lit it, too. He lifted it the way he hadn’t been able to for his father, and sent the light shining on the dark underbelly of the canopy.
Hermione dug hers out and murmured a watery “Lumos.” Harry and Ron lit theirs, too, and pointed them at the place Ivan’s brother had called home.
Viktor’s grave was still and cold, and a dozen wands shone softly in the dark glade, like a tiny constellation of earthbound stars.
Someone was playing music. Through the trees, there were sounds of strings and distant drums, a band of ghostly troubadours, and he didn’t know if that was part of the service or not. His father’s funeral had been silent. But this wasn’t his father’s country, and his father had died a long time ago.
Hermione held his hand like it was the last thing on earth she could touch. He laced their fingers. Maybe it was. He wouldn’t have been able to tell. Nothing in the world was real, just then, except for her cold palm, and the lights dim and bleak over their heads.
When the lights started going out, one by one, he extinguished his wand and put it away. The grove faded to near-complete darkness, and the gold carpet dissipated under their feet. People started to move around and talk to each other, in the low respectful murmurs, and Viktor’s mother led the party in from the lawn, a long train of black-and-gold figures floating toward the house.
Hermione spoke, and her voice was thick.
“Was that it?”
“That was it.”
Harry and Ron came over, and Harry took Hermione’s other hand.
“Dumbledore says we can stay as long as we like,” said Harry. His voice was low and dull. “The Embassy won’t send a Portkey for us until we’re ready.”
“I don’t really want to stay,” said Hermione. Then: “Sorry. That sounds awful.”
“Nah. Me either.” Ron gestured to the house. “Besides, they’ll want a moment to themselves, I reckon.”
Draco said, “Quite,” and was surprised by his own vehemence.
“To be clear,” he said, “that’s what I wanted. At the time.”
There was another lingering moment of appreciative silence. He wished he hadn’t said that. There was no need to be weepy and insipid. It had been years; there was no dignified reason for him to be harboring anything but an appropriate amount of sober regret.
Hermione pressed her head against the side of his arm. He leaned away, deeply uncomfortable — not at her touch, but at the implication that he needed comforting.
“Time to go,” said Ron hoarsely.
“Yeah,” said Harry, staring at the mound of earth. “Yeah. Time to go.”
Ron wrapped his arm around Harry’s shoulder, and thus joined, the four of them trudged into the starless night.
In the morning, while the nation of Bulgaria flocked to the official state funeral being held in Sofia, Draco learned that he had passed Defense Against the Dark Arts, despite the fact that he had watched the professor be violently enucleated. He had scored 100% on the exam, tying Hermione’s perfect O, though because she had bested him in Transfiguration and History of Magic — he never could be damned to pay attention to Binns — and dropped only one point in Potions, he would get second rank in the year. It was expected. Under normal auspices he would gloat until hoarse, but with things as they were, nobody cared, and one couldn’t really blame them.
On the last day of fourth year, he woke up to a screech even stronger than Ron’s snoring. In the darkness of what must have been an ungodly distance from sunrise, an owl with sabled feathers was demanding entrance at his window, and through the fug of irritation, he nearly dropped the small brown parcel tied to its claws.
Inside was a black velvet box with a snakeshead clasp, and it nipped his finger when he tried to open it. When he was finished hopping around and hissing curses at it, the snake licked up the pinprick of blood, flickered its forked tongue, and pried open its jaws, unlocking the box.
A pair of silver cufflinks sat on a bed of green satin, inlaid with the letter ‘D,’ and a tiny diamond chip apiece. A strip of parchment nested between them.
Happy fifteenth. Not that you deserve it.
I’m s orry
He debated whether or not to pitch the things out the Tower window.
Ultimately, it was settled by Ron waking up and demanding to know why it was so bloody cold in the dorm, which led him to shut the window and wedge the cufflinks into his trunk. He could always hurl them into the Manor lake, if he changed his mind.
The four of them went down to Hogsmeade for the train. It rained that day: the kind of light summer rainstorm that left the forests damp and shuddering with green new life, the scent of wet fertile earth, fresh flowers, perfumed wind.
Rain followed them to the platform and drizzled from the eaves. Gray skies, condensation beading on the engine, umbrellas bobbing like black valves with the movements of the crowd. Students with their hoods turned up, hats turned low. No great boom of Hagrid’s voice, directing traffic; no shouts and panicked fumble for forgotten things. They lingered a while under the platform to say goodbye to Harry, who would be Flooing to Grimmauld Place with Remus and Sirius later.
Arthur and Molly took turns bruising him with hugs, and then Bill gave his nose a tweak, and told him to send a list of possible birthday presents. The idea of creating an entire list of things he wanted seemed to leave Harry flabbergasted; Draco offered to send him some templates and a spreadsheet.
Then, in the awkward, shoe-shuffling silence of deciding who would say goodbye first, someone’s voice floated over the din: “Arry! Eez that you?”
Through the crowd came Fleur Delacour, wearing a pale blue raincoat with matching heels and cloche, like some sort of fashion advert from the thirties. She tossed a sheaf of blonde hair over her shoulder and extended her hand, fingers-down, to Harry, who — either gravely misunderstanding the request, or understanding it very well — grasped it, turned it right-way up, and shook it.
Fleur’s lip curled; but then she broke into a surprising little charm of a laugh. She dabbed a kiss on his cheek, and then she turned to Ron.
“You,” she said, “‘ave saved my life.”
“What?” said Ron, concussedly.
“In ze maze. You are ‘elping me. I am not forgetting.” She opened her cornflower pocketbook and withdrew an envelope. The envelope was heavy, and disgorged a large amount of glitter when opened. Ron looked mournfully at his freshly bedazzled feet.
“Eet eez from Gabrielle,” Fleur added, pointing at the scrawl on the card. “She eez wanting to say thank-you. And my parents, as well, for ze service you ‘ave done to my family. And zis! Zis eez from Madame Maxime, who sezz you may come to Beauxbatons and have ze honor and ze favor of ze Maxime family. Zey are very well connected, you know! Your name eez ’eard often in ze ’alls of Paris.” She indicated a final signature.
“Yeah,” said Ron softly. He looked at the card with spellbound wonder, as if it were a far shinier, far grander thing. “It’s really good, Fleur.”
“Yes! I know. Anyway. You are welcome always at our house, and at ze Beauxbatons Academy,” she sniffed. “Gabrielle’s friend is thinking she will marry you and ’ave many children, but do not fear, mon ame: I am warning her off.”
Ron snapped his head up, betrayed.
“You’re what?”
“You are disappointed. Do not be,” Fleur ordered. “You are not wanting to marry ’er. She cannot perform any of ze major blood curses, and she does not ’ave ze ’ips for children. She could never make ze wife of an ’ero. I ’ave protected you.”
“Thanks,” said Ron desolately.
“You ’are welcome.” Patting him on the shoulder, she returned to Harry.
“We will see each uzzer again, I ’ope,” she said. “I am ’oping to get a job at Gringotts.”
“Doing what?” said Hermione, not so much rude as curious.
“Curse-breaking. It will be easy, but maman wants me to go easy, for a while, now I am out of school.”
“Easy, is it?” said Bill, amused.
She sniffed. “ Oui. Ze curse breaking eez simple: you identify ze curse, and you find ze countercurse. E voila. At Beauxbatons, every student can do zis.”
He snorted.
“…And what eez it you find funny?”
“Well — not to be patronizing, but it’s a little different, in the real world.”
“Oh? And where is zat?”
“The Gringotts Bureau of Cursebreakers, for one,” he said easily, slipping his thumbs through his beltloops.
She scoffed.
“No? You don’t believe me?” He was smiling a little.
She scoffed again. “I believe zey ‘ired you. I do not know if zey should ‘ave; I do not know you. I only know ze kind of man who thinks cursebreaking eez difficult eez perhaps not ze man to lecture me about anyzing.”
“It’s not lec— sorry. Should’ve been clear,” said Bill calmly, holding up a hand. “I didn’t mean any offense. It’s just that some curses take months to even identify. And the thing is, they do atrophy—”
“Oh! And now ze man with ze ponytail eez going to explain curse erosion to me.”
Ron wheezed, and lurched into Harry, whose cheeks were ballooned with repressed sound.
“Curse erosion isn’t a simple concept,” explained Bill, with warm but dwindling patience. “There’s no shame in getting it wrong.”
“Getting eet wrong? You are saying I am stupid?”
“No. Obviously, I didn’t mean that—”
“Oh, obviously!” She brandished a finger at his nose. “Do not patronize me, tall Englishman! I will not be demeaned by a man ’oo does not even know ’ow to condition ’eez hair!”
Bill’s eyebrows took a long hike north.
“Alright,” he said. “Noted. My name’s Bill, by the way, though apparently I’ll answer to ‘Tall Englishman’ if asked.”
It was not exactly levity he felt, watching Bill get his arse handed to him by a petite Frenchwoman; but it was probably the closest thing to it he’d felt in a while.
A flashbulb detonated in the corner of his eye. He snarled and drew his wand on instinct, and had great plans to make use of the few remaining minutes of lawful use of magic before Colin Creevey threw up his hands and yelped: “Wait! Wait! Not real! Hang on! I’ve got a good reason!”
Dropping his camera, he brandished a tiny lanyard that hung around his neck. The badge read: Colin Creevey — Director of Photography, The Hogwarts Enquirer.
“Isn’t it great, Hermione? McGonagall suggested it! She said I could work for the school and do photography and make people happy, but to be a proper photographer I had to get permission with a special form so please,” he stuck out a roll of parchment, “sign here if you want your picture in the paper, it’s a really good paper, we’re doing a feature on the summer holidays, also it’s a really good picture, and you guys look really, really good! Hi, Harry,” he added, gasped for breath, and then leaned over on his knees. “Oh and also by the way. I have — to — say — sorry. Hold on. Gotta breathe.”
“Oh,” said Harry uncomfortably. “You don’t have to… really, we can forget it…”
“No, it wasn’t right,” said Colin passionately. He sounded more than a little like Hermione; Draco’s mouth curved. “They were lying about you and I helped them and it was mean and wrong and Harry I’m really sorry but I didn’t know any better and now I DO know better and I won’t ever ever do it again. And I’m going to tell everyone how great you are and they’ll believe me because I,” he said, brandishing his lanyard, “am a real journalist. Not like her.”
His disdain was also strongly familiar. Perhaps S.C.R.U.M.B.Y. meetings were good for something, after all.
“What’s the difference?” ventured Harry.
“Journalistic integgity!”
“Integrity,” said Hermione quietly, smiling. “In-teg-rity.”
“Yes! That!”
Ron snickered. “Alright, sold,” he said, and signed the form. “Make sure you get my good side, alright, Colin?”
“Yeah! I will! Awesome! Thanks, Ron!!”
Harry and Draco pointedly declined the waivers, but Hermione shrugged and jotted out her own signature. “It’s good advertising for S.C.R.U.M.B.Y.,” she said, and Colin, wheezing with excitement, fumbled around in his bag.
“Oh! Also! Reminds me! Gosh, nearly forgot.” He rooted in his bag and produced an empty mason jar, which he offered to Hermione. “This came back today, too. In case you wanted it or something maybe I don’t know. Dennis said uhhh why would she want it back, but I was like gosh Dennis maybe she doesn’t have a million it’s not like jars grow on trees or something.” He snorted.
This was greatly sardonic, by Colin’s standards; perhaps his third year would mark a rebellious streak. Draco pictured it, and felt a twinge of genuine delight.
“Oh — thanks,” she said hastily, and stuffed it into her satchel. Draco watched her.
They loitered all morning on the drizzly platform. The train whistled smoke, and the porters began herding children more purposefully. Harry wrapped himself around first Ron, then Hermione, and then shook Draco’s hand while holding his shoulder, a compromise between his preference and Draco’s.
“Come visit,” he said, a little desperately. “It’s a big house. There’s plenty of room.”
“Sold,” said Ron. “Be there tomorrow.”
“Ron!”
“What? They can give my bed to Ginny, she wants a weight room.”
Hermione gave Harry a bit of parchment. “You remember my address,” she said, “and if you need anything — or if you want to see that doctor I told you about—”
“I remember.”
“And if you think you might want to then it’s best to book early, if you can, because these things fill up—”
“I’ll think about it.”
“—you don’t have to go, just make the appointment, is what I’m saying. Ask Remus, he’ll know. And you’ll want to get your health records from the Dursleys—”
“Hermione.”
She hugged him.
“You’ll be alright?” she muttered.
“Oh, yeah.” Harry smiled, a little roguish, a little bleak. “Me? Always.”
As they boarded the train, a black dog came trotting under the turnstile and came to sit by Harry’s side, its tail wagging powerfully. Through the rain-streaked glass, Draco could see it nose its head into Harry’s hand, licking him comfortingly, while Harry waved at them and pretended to have some sort of irritant in his eyes.
“He’s gonna be alright, you reckon?” mused Ron. “Without us?”
“He won’t be for long,” said Hermione firmly. “I’m going to come visit him in a week. My parents want me to apply for a provisional driver’s license, anyway, the drives will be good practice.”
“Blimey. You’re gonna get a car?”
“Next year, if I don’t wreck. Dad promised to teach me this summer.”
“There have been weaker cases made for child abuse,” said Draco.
“It’s not half as bad as a broomstick.”
They filed down the hallways of the Express, which had never seemed narrower than they did then, as if the train had shrunk since their last outing on it. Ron found a compartment near the caboose, away from where his family was sitting — “I’m seeing them all summer, they won’t miss me another few hours” — and Draco took advantage of their missing fourth to kick his feet up on the seat, taking one bench all to himself.
The train coasted through a gloomy highland. Draco watched upside-down through the window as the spires of Hogwarts receded behind the treeline, faded to pinpricks against a gray sky, and vanished.
By and by, Ron leaned forward on his knees. “I wanted to talk about something,” he said quietly. “Just us three. I just wanted to… yeah. I dunno. Touch base? Get us together on what’s going to happen next year.”
Hermione looked at Draco, a furtive thing.
“I don’t think we can do anything now,” said Ron, “that’s not what I’m saying, but — I just wanted to say — we’re in this, yeah? With this stuff, and the Ministry, and Voldemort being back, all of it — it’s only going to get harder. But we’re still in this.”
“‘In this’?”
“What do you mean?”
“Harry. We’re in it with him. Because we’re all he’s got, you know?” he said roughly. “We kept him alive this year, we did, and it’s like it’s going to get easier to do. But he needs us to. So we’ve got to decide, out front, if we’re in it. You know. Open-eyed, clear-headed, while we’ve still got time to maneuver. I don’t want us caught without our boots on.”
“No,” said Draco quietly. “Inexpedient.”
“Right? Okay. Good. Don’t answer now, if you don’t want to, just think on it. And he doesn’t ever need to hear about this, because I don’t think he’d like it if he did, but I just want us to all understand — that if it comes to it, and it’s… you know, if it’s Death Eaters again, or something worse, and I don’t like talking about this but we’ve got to because it already happened once — I just want you lot to know,” he finished, thickly, swallowing, “that if it’s him or me, you’ve got to — it’s him. Okay?”
His voice was edged in panic. Draco wasn’t sure what the panic was for: himself, or Harry.
“But I — I can’t promise that,” said Hermione. “I couldn’t possibly promise that, Ron, I—”
“No, no! Don’t, like, leave me to die or anything,” he exclaimed, “Merlin, Mione—”
“Well what was I supposed to think you meant, honestly, you dramatic ponce, with your ‘him or me’—”
“You might get creative about it first, all I’m saying— no. No! I meant, like. You can let me get hurt,” he said, parceling his words carefully, “if it’s for him. Alright? I… I’m the one who takes the hit. It’s me. I’ll live. Or I’ll try to. But I’m saying, like, you can — you’re authorized to make that decision. On your end. If you think you need to. Don’t worry about me.”
Draco stared at him. He felt as though he’d never met him before, this solemn, unflagging Ron, with a square jaw and a fire in his eyes, burning like the cornflower blue of Hermione’s flames.
“Alright?” he said earnestly.
“Ron,” said Hermione intently. She reached out and touched the side of Ron’s face; he leaned into it like he needed it sorely. “You’re aware that he won’t let you, right?”
“What, Draco?” He jerked his head at Draco, half-smiling. “Nah. If the only thing between me and a jinx is Draco Malfoy’s sentimental feelings, I can kiss myself goodbye, mate.”
That stung. “Excuse me. I wouldn’t let you perish, thank you.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s what I like about you,” said Ron, surprising him. “One thing about you, it’s that you can get it done. You’re like a rook, you know? Shoot straight, kill ’em in the endgame.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he settled on a mild, vaguely approving: “Hm.”
“No, I don’t mean Draco,” she said firmly. “If something hurts you, it’ll have to go through Harry.” Then, pointedly: “And me, by the way.”
Ron smiled. “Yeah,” he said, turning to face the window. Gabrielle’s card glittered in his breast pocket like a badge of silver. “I know.”
Outside, green hills braided into thick wooded glens. Hermione ordered tea and did their summer Transfiguration reading. Ulysses and Thucydides were dozing with their heads tucked under their wings, and Crookshanks curled in the space between Hermione and Ron like a ginger pincushion. Rain laved on the sides of the carriage over the chitter of the wheels.
He woke to a tapping at the door.
He swiped sleep from his eye and sat up quickly, embarrassed. It was his first dreamless sleep in weeks.
Hermione was watching him from the other corner of the carriage, her expression clouded and soft. His cheeks felt warm.
He pulled a face at her, and she rolled her eyes away.
Fred stuck his head into the compartment. “There you are, Ron,” he said. “Family meeting in Car Thirteen. Be there or get disinherited.”
“Disinherited from what?” complained Ron, “I’m not getting so much as a knut,” but he grumbled to his feet. “You lot wait for me, yeah?”
“No, in fact, I thought I’d disembark at Peterborough.”
“Prat.” He flicked a Chocolate Frog card at Draco; Draco caught it and sent four ounces of Ulick Gamp hurtling back at his face. To his surprise, Ron caught it, too, though in the process crumpled poor Ulick past the point of identification. Practice with Harry might’ve done something for him, after all.
“Chop, chop, Ronnikins, Mummy’s waiting! We’ve im-por-tant family business.” Fred’s tone was jovial, but his posture wasn’t. There was a very clear difference between the twins in a good humor and the twins in any other, mostly because the latter occurred so rarely; in the second before Ron closed the door, Draco was treated to a rare glimpse of Fred Weasley’s serious face, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“What’s that about, do you think?” said Hermione, as their footsteps faded from the hallway.
“I imagine it’s a continuation of whatever conversation Molly Weasley was having with Dumbledore.” He sat upright, smoothing some wrinkles from his shirt, and wished for a Steaming Charm. “Or she’s seen Ronald’s grades, and they’re staging an intervention.”
“More likely Fred’s,” she said absently. “No. I expect they’re going to take precautions to guard the Burrow.”
“Speaking of which. Your parents—”
“Aren’t going to let me live anywhere else,” she said shortly. “It’s bad enough, boarding school, without me leaving home entirely.”
He considered this, and acknowledged it.
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s one muggle house in a million. There’s next to no chance.”
“I don’t like what ‘next to’ is doing in that sentence.”
“I don’t, either,” she said, “but they’re not going into hiding.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
Hermione took her lip between her teeth and worried it without answering.
“You ought to.”
“If I tell them, they might not let me come back,” she said, and that was such an awful shock he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier just to kidnap her altogether.
“Let you, nothing,” he said, with bravado that even he could hear was thin. “You could argue a fault line back together.”
“I’m serious. My mum has been looking at other boarding places, muggle schools—”
“You can’t leave,” he said shortly, sitting up straight. “That’s not acceptable.”
“I know that, but—”
“If they try to keep you, you’ll write to me.”
Her brows furrowed. “And you’ll do what, exactly?”
“Come and get you.”
“…To go where?”
“Anywhere. To the Manor. Or to wherever you’d like. Put you up in a hotel, if you’d like one. Else we’d find you a flat or something. Mother’s been meaning to break into London real estate.”
She was looking at him from the corner of her eye, almost warily. “That’s a ridiculous expense.”
“What you and I take for an ‘expense’ are two different planets in two different solar systems.”
“And you wouldn’t really want me at the Manor,” she added, frowning. “Not with your mother there.”
“It’s not my mother’s house. It’s mine. I’m Lord Malfoy, and I’ll have whatever guests I like.”
And then, to temper the note of whinging, he added: “And I’m sick of shipping you books. I’m not a rental service, you ought to just come and raid the bloody library for yourself.”
Hermione was looking at him so intensely that he feared he would soon sport holes from it.
“Is that a real invitation?”
“Of course it is.” He hadn’t thought of it, actually, to start — it had been more of a hazy plan of don’t let your life get ruined, forever, again — but now he thought of it, it was an exceptional idea. Part of the bother of a summer was having to wait two to three days every time he wanted to hear from her, and if she was in a room down the hall, she’d be there to irritate him whenever he liked.
An on-demand Granger. Coming down in the mornings with the wet hair and the sleepy eyes, in bathrobes or dressing gowns, complaining about his opinions on Runes. Or wearing those muggle things, the small shirts and the trousers that suggested some sort of great muggle fabric shortage, just lounging around in the library with tea and chocolates, pink and imperious and incidentally very difficult for anyone to hex. “You could come straight from King’s Cross, if you liked.”
“Draco!”
“What?”
“Are you joking?”
“I’m not.”
She was in disbelief.
“If you’re serious,” she said, “then I’d love to come, of course. I’ll talk to my parents about it. When I could go.”
She was gauging his seriousness. He shrugged. “Go on, then. Or don’t. The warding on the Manor is excellent, they wouldn’t find you.”
“I’m not running away from home.”
“Yet.”
“At all.”
“Foreseeably.”
The wooded planes of England streaked through the window in a smear of emerald watercolor, dotted with the last flush of spring flowers. A service road passed along the train tracks, and cars scuttled alongside it, racing the train.
“How did you figure it out?” he said idly, watching one pull ahead and plow its headlights into the gloom.
“Hm?”
“About Skeeter.”
She startled. “What? I didn’t.”
“Granger.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Who?”
He inclined his head at her.
“From Colin,” she admitted. “After he went to the Hospital Wing, I cornered him, and I … I applied a bit of pressure, let’s say. About how you’d stuck your neck out for him, even after he wrote all that, and how kind that was, and how he really owed it to us — I might’ve laid it on a bit thick—”
“You? Never.”
“Anyway,” she said pointedly, “he told me he always met her near the window of the Clock Tower, so I made him ask her for a meeting. Then I took the Invisibility Cloak and snuck out, waited in the cloisters with him, and I saw her.”
“Transforming.”
“Yes. After that, it was rather simple.”
“To seize a grown witch as your prisoner.”
“I prefer,” said the madwoman, “the term ‘citizen’s arrest.’ There was another bit to the story, too, after all; it turns out that Colin took a photograph of Cassius Warrington and Flora Carrow doing — something unmentionable — in one of the dungeon enclaves, so Cassius sent Flint and Goyle after him to make a point. Well, obviously Colin was horrified, so I suggested he should talk to McGonagall about less dangerous creative outlets, and apparently he found one.”
“Lovely. He’s credentialed. I’m still hung up on the part where you kept a human being hostage in a jam jar.”
“She wouldn’t have ended up in a jam jar in the first place if she hadn’t broken the law.”
“We’ve broken laws.”
“Not the good ones,” she said stiffly, and he laughed, sort of helplessly, because he couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
She was mad, properly, and madly brilliant, and simply ruthless in just the best kind of ridiculous ways, which was a problem, because thinking about any of those things made him want to kiss her. But it was hard not to think about them, when she was right there, being herself without a clue what she was even doing, because it had never occurred to her that people didn’t usually go around kidnapping journalists and leveraging solitary confinement. It was even harder not to kiss her, but he couldn’t do that, not without risking a fracture in something very delicate and valuable and necessary for his survival, so he stuck to thinking about it instead.
Another problem: he had to work through this chain of thought all over again every time the impulse struck, and it was distracting. Hermione was staring.
“Are you alright?”
“No,” he informed the carriage ceiling. “Not remotely, and with no plans to be in the foreseeable future. Yourself?”
She drew her knees up onto the seat and folded them neatly under her. “Me either,” she said quietly. “I’m worried.”
“About…”
She rolled her hand: The obvious.
He had the bizarre sensation of wanting to tell her it would be alright, although it wouldn’t.
The train chimed. A porter announced that they were approaching King’s Cross. Hermione stood up, and Crookshanks, with a tiny yowl, launched onto Draco’s side of the compartment, scrabbling over his legs.
“I think we should talk about it,” she said. “Since we might not get the chance. About your family, and — the situation.”
“Did you, now.”
“I mean, it could be important. Because whatever happens—”
“‘Whatever’ is an expansive category.”
She took a bracing breath. “I know that your father—”
“Isn’t going to join the Dark Lord’s forces from the grave. Even he’s not quite so loyal as that.”
“Yes, but your mother—”
“Won’t.” His voice was flat.
“If she does,” Hermione said, intently, “you should know that it doesn’t have to change anything. You can come stay with me—”
He could have laughed, but it would have sounded hysterical. “It wouldn’t change anything?”
“No! That’s my point, it wouldn’t have to!” She was desperate. “You’re not your mother. You could be — I mean, you’re different. If you needed somewhere to go—”
“You’ll stick me in your basement?”
“You’re not alone,” she snapped. Her mouth was flat as a spearline and her face was all set and shining with the come-take-me-with-an-army sort of determination and it was awful, it was actually, acutely painful, to think of it ever being directed against a figure in a white mask, and if she had any compassion for him she would stop. “You’re not. Not while I’m here. I wouldn’t let you be.”
He stood up, and she followed him.
“Draco—”
“You really have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said, sharp without being unkind. “I know what they are. I saw everything you did, in that maze, and I’m just saying—”
“I’m not the one they’ll be after.”
“That doesn’t make you safe! No one’s safe, you know that! But you aren’t alone, and you don’t— you don’t need them to protect you, there are lots of people — not just me — you wouldn’t be safe, but if nobody’s safe, then you might as well be with people, who — care about you. Because they do. So — so very much, Draco.”
She stumbled on the dismount, like she couldn’t quite say it. It was very earnest; it was almost pleading.
It struck him, with a disarming blaze of pain, that she wasn’t afraid they were going to hurt him. She was afraid of something worse.
He turned around and stepped into her space. His mind was empty, and there was a white high-pitched noise somewhere between his ears, a shriek of something between panic and anger.
“Do you think they’d take me?” he asked her, and relished her glimmer of guilt, fleeting as it was. He pressed. He was being mean, and he didn’t care, not in the slightest. “Actually, don’t answer that, it doesn’t matter. You think I’d try?”
“I think you’d do anything to protect your family.”
The pain of that otherwise blindingly unanswerable remark was dulled by her adding, “It’s not a bad thing. I’m just making a point, is all. That you don’t have to do — something you can’t take back.”
“Something I can’t take back?”
“You know what I mean. I’m not trying to be cruel, I know you wouldn’t want to, but—”
“Wouldn’t want to?”
“But you might feel — if you didn’t think that you had a choice, I mean—”
“Have you been worrying about this?” The white noise was piercing. “You’ve been lying there at night, wondering whether I’m going to run off and become a terrorist?”
“Oh, stop pretending to be offended,” she snapped. “I haven’t said a thing judging you, I’ve been nothing but understanding, I haven’t asked a single question about your mother’s plans even though frankly it’d be highly relevant for my own safety to know, and I’m only trying to give you information about your options so you don’t do something irreparably stupid.”
“Truly inconceivable how anyone could take offense at that, isn’t it.”
“Don’t be dense! Look at it my way! What am I supposed to think?”
“What are you supposed to think?”
“What am I supposed to think! You’re my friend, and I love you, but I can’t stand here and lie and say I don’t think you’ve ever thought about it, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t mat—”
He stepped forward and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, forcing her head back up, to look at him. She went all still, strings lashed, volume cut.
He was struggling not to shout. It wasn’t quite working.
“You monumental idiot,” he said. Which wasn’t what he meant to say, but fuck it, he’d work with what he had. “They wouldn’t take me, you realize, even if I tried.”
There was a pause.
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” she said scornfully. “You can’t be a Death Eater because you aren’t up to scratch?”
“Because they’d kill me.”
She flinched.
“Do you want to know what would happen? Do you know what I see, Granger, when I think about joining up? The moment I offered up my wand, the Dark Lord would put me on my knees and crack open my skull, to make sure I wasn’t a deserter or double-agent, and he’d find you, and I’d be dead in seconds if he was merciful.”
She was staring at him, sort of dazed and pallid.
“What about — me?” she said, stilted.
“You. Any of you. All of you. This conversation, any conversation, me touching you, me ever touching you, any of it would be enough. And I’ve known that. That’s the really stupid thing, you know, I’ve known for years that you’d be — that you’d keep me from that, if I let you. And I let you. I keep letting you.”
She twitched. He cast around for something to say, abruptly frightened of what would happen when he started thinking clearly again.
“And maybe I — maybe that’s what I wanted. To let you. Because I’m a coward. I’m a coward, and I knew on some level that if I kept going, I’d never have to think about doing what my father did. I’d never be that, I’d never have to do what he did. I’d foreclose that future. And my life would be over — I mean actually fucking over, dead, done, gone, nothing — but I wouldn’t have to do it. And I was right.
“So here I am. Until you or Potter or Dumbledore don’t want me, I suppose, in which case I’ll just go die or something. I don’t know. It’s up to you. This is your fault, really, if you think about it. You shouldn’t have kept me. It would have been easier for both of us if you didn’t.”
She flinched at that, but he was distracted by the enormous and nauseating swell of regret at permitting himself to open his mouth. He had done it, him and his heinous stupidity, he had stood there and told her.
She ought to have been repelled by that. The nakedness of it. He was, a little.
Instead — because she was mad, he always forgot that, he should have remembered — she said, “Good.”
“What?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, simply, almost irritably. “It’s good. You’re a good person, and I’m sorry that’s made your life hard, but unfortunately, I don’t really care. I like you as you are, and I — you have to know that I’m never going to turn away from you, never, right? Forget that dramatic nonsense about ‘until you don’t want me,’ that isn’t — that’s stupid, utterly ridiculous. I won’t. Not ever. So if you’re worried about changing, just don’t go.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was unsteady. “Just ple— just stay. I can do the rest. If you just stay.”
On impulse, she grabbed his hand and held it tightly, like she was asking for something.
It was ridiculous, but he had the oddest temptation to cry.
Relief was a monstrous thing. It was a dangerous narcotic, the effervescent swell of relief, the fireworks of endorphins and adrenaline and a dizzy lightheadedness that reminded him of flying. Worse than grief, far worse than pain. Almost as bad as hope.
“Alright.”
“Yes? Alright?” She smiled wanly, teasing. “That’s it? The cause, the war, you’re sold?”
“No,” he said. “But you asked.”
She laughed wetly, and shuffled into his chest, not so much asking for a hug as insisting on one.
It had become instinctive to draw her in, one hand still braced on her head, the other wrapped around her waist, and hold her.
The problem wasn’t that he had never hugged her before. He’d suffered enough of Hermione’s embraces to write essays on the subject, and spent more of his life than he’d ever volunteer picking long brown hairs off his dress shirts, usually accompanied by full-throated threats to go after the culprit herself with a lint roller.
The problem was that she was older than she’d been for most of those times, and a lot softer in a lot of places, and her hands were fisted in his shirt in ways that dragged her nails across his skin, and there was an unfair temptation to take it personally, somehow, when an extraordinarily pretty girl pressed up against him like she was trying to perform meiosis. And breathing on his neck with short, nervous little flushes of hot air, like she didn’t think he could feel her doing that, like he could possibly fucking ignore it, when half of his spine was on fire and part of his brain was marking out portions of his dignity to auction off for a chance to feel more of it.
He commanded it, though. He wasn’t helpless. There were some things he could have, and some things he could — but shouldn’t — and the things he had were enough. There were some parts of Hermione Granger that he had, and no one else did, and those parts were enough.
What he wanted, in the privacy of his own heart, was no one’s business but his own.
Brakes whistled. The train was slowing, and London’s dull lights were pressing through the inkstain of smog under clouds, and the wave of momentum canted them to the side. Hermione huffed in reproach and then she lifted her head and her face was right there and— fuck.
If she didn’t move, he was going to kiss her. So much for he wasn’t helpless, fucking hell.
But she did move, thank Merlin: she lowered herself back down onto her heels, revealing that she had been on her toes for some of the time, for some reason, maybe to have better access to that bit of his collarbone she liked to put her head on. He didn’t know. He didn’t know virtually anything except relief and the horrible, despairing sensation of his body digging his heels in and wanting something, wanting with every organ, which was an incredible amount of wanting to refuse. For a man whose self-restraint had never been his strong suit, or even a suit of any kind at all.
“Happy birthday,” she said. It would occur to him at some point tomorrow morning, when he gathered the last of his wits, that this was a slightly irrelevant thing to say, and had been delivered without her usual sort of cheerful conviction. He was cognitively so far from this point that he accepted it without question.
“Don’t get cross,” she ordered. And he was about to inquire what on earth he had to be cross about when she kissed him on the cheek.
Which was the worst of both worlds, if anything, because now he had to sort out what to do with the knowledge of what her mouth on his skin felt like for the rest of his life. It ought to have been a war crime, doing something like that. He should have been able to sue her for the sleep he was going to lose thinking about it.
“Granger,” he said, strangled.
“You’re such a prude,” she laughed, and stepped away to fetch her trunk from the rack. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take liberties — Daphne did say it would fluster you, but I thought she’d exaggerated.”
Daphne Greengrass was a dead woman.
“Have a good laugh about it together, did you?” he said acidly.
“No,” she said, swinging her trunk down, “I just — actually, never mind.”
“What?”
“It isn’t important.”
Which was insulting on several levels, and obviously false on all.
The train chuffed to a halt. Doors rattled up and down the hallway. Through the steam fleeing past the window, the faces of waiting families swam into view. High-pitched cries of welcome and relief carried through the glass.
Hermione opened the door of the carriage, and turned back. “Well? Aren’t you coming?” she said, tilting her head, intractably bossy and unable to help it, and it occurred to him that it didn’t really matter that she only meant to the platform. She could stand on the edge of a cliff and say aren’t you coming? and it would be, alright, Granger, tell us the plan, because she was a fool but he was an idiot, and it was better to fall together than stand alone.
“After you,” he said. And then he followed her.
Holy shit. Well. Can’t believe we’re here, to be honest.
I’m going on hiatus while I finish writing book five. I don’t know how long it will take — I wish I did, but unfortunately, since I’m going back to work in the fall, it might take longer than I’m planning. If I have updates on the schedule, I’ll post them on my tumblr. Otherwise, thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you again for good measure. If you’re reading these words, then it’s already a compliment beyond my words to express.
It’s strangely fitting that this chapter marks the nearly one-year anniversary of starting this fic. In ten days, it will have been one whole year since I posted “The Last Malfoy,” which is a kind of serendipity I couldn’t plan if I tried. I am in such a wildly different place in my life that it’s almost funny to look back over the chapters and remember what I was doing when I wrote them, all those months ago, in a different state. I’m moving to England in a month! And I’m starting school again! It’s going to be so much fun! And I’m so excited for what comes next, both with this fic and in my real life. I couldn’t say that a year ago. My luck is immeasurable and my gratitude is double its size.
Thank you so, so much to anyone still reading. You have my love and my best wishes, and all the luck I can send you.
Sincerely,
GT 🍵
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