Chapter 62: The Miseducation of Hermione Granger
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Enveloped by the fiery vestitures of a highland autumn, the quidditch pitch sat at the base of the hill, an iron crown frilled in burgundy.
It was a fine, sunny afternoon, the second Tuesday of the term, and the vanishing few clouds that came wandering over the hills were as goosefeathers on a blue coverlet. Most of the team was already assembled on the pitch. Angelina wore her box braids in a high ponytail and stood with her broomstick cocked at her hip, directing a mass of queuing hopefuls. Fred and George warmed up by ricocheting a bludger across the field between them. Katie was doing a series of show-offy stretches with her legs.
In the stands, a collection of spectators had filed in, including Hermione — who had complained about it all the way to the pitch, but also passionately rejected any offers to skive off.
It was gratifying that she’d come to watch, even if she had buried her nose in a book the moment she sat down, and seemed unlikely to witness any fits of dazzling aerial brilliance that certain handsome persons might be inclined to do.
Which was her own loss, really.
Angelina drifted above the crowd, piping twice on her whistle. “OI, EVERYBODY!” she shouted, at earsplitting volume. Fred, with one finger in his ear, shot her a thumbs-up. “WELCOME TO QUIDDITCH TRYOUTS! WE’VE GOT ONE SPOT THIS YEAR, AND IT’S KEEPER. IF YOU CAN’T FLY KEEPER, HEAD ON OUT AND SAVE EVERYONE’S TIME.”
No one moved. She shrugged.
“ALRIGHT, THEN. MOUNT YOUR BROOMS!”
Draco kicked off, and the Nimbus purred to top speed in the time it took to blink.
It was a beautiful afternoon for flying, and he cut into the sky like a dash of red paint, a blurry arc. He crested the stands and arched into a hairpin turn with his whole body, dragging the broomstick through a beautifully structured turn, like half a helix; then he bent and dipped into a long straightaway over the stands, the wind rushing up to welcome him back.
Players leapt into the air like a flock of red birds, jostling each other or grappling for control of their broomsticks. Most of them were hopelessly slow; they were too frightened of the broom, too worried of losing control at top speeds. He spun into a dive, corkscrewed out of it, and wove through the other players like an eel through a current. Some of them startled and yelped when he shouldered past, but others, like Ginny, only shouldered him back and pressed faster, cutting through the crowds, breaking out into a small formation at the front of the pack.
Harry was above them all, knitting a dizzy series of aerial stunts through the air over the pitch. His face was slack and peaceful, and it was the most relaxed Draco had seen him all summer, if not long before.
Without warning, Ginny split from the pack and rocketed past him, sending him into a clumsy spin, and they had a laughing exchange at the top of their lungs that it was good the younger students couldn’t hear.
It was soon Ginny’s turn. Draco attempted to evaluate her objectively as a player, without indulging in favoritism on the basis of someone being tolerable. She was good at tricky shots: there was a clear level of skill and imagination on display, and she had the reach to execute them, as well as the requisite fearlessness. One block saw her dangling from her knee and left arm, under her broomstick, in order to knock away a ball with fiendish underspin from Angelina. When she saw an opportunity, she tended to do something brilliant, or else missed it altogether.
One of them was Draco’s. He judged that she favored her right side, as people used to playing chaser tended to, and pitched across her body, socketing it under her left arm. It whistled freely through the hoop.
Ginny swore and swiped at empty air. The quaffle shot through the hoop and he flew to catch it, a showy dive down the back of the goalposts, and hocked it back to Katie for the next shot. A group in the stands erupted into applause, and he noticed that several people besides Hermione had come to watch: Lavender, Parvati, and Padma Patil, as well as Cho and another girl from Ravenclaw, were waving streamers and drinking what appeared to be pumpkin juice from champagne flutes.
Parvati waved cheerfully and whistled at him. Padma hid her face, then picked up a book and began hitting Parvati with it.
He rolled his eyes and saluted at them. Lavender mimed a catch and pressed it to her chest.
Hermione clapped mildly. She sat apart from them with a book open on her legs and a cup of tea steaming on her right, and she arched a deeply skeptical eyebrow when the girls started cheering. At Lavender’s catch, she made a show of rolling her eyes so hard her whole head moved.
He floated down within earshot. When his shadow covered her page, she glanced up, unimpressed.
“Having fun?”
“Not as much as some,” she said, wryly. Her face was faintly flushed from the sunlight, and the wind sent her hair dancing free of its clasp.
“Do you mean me? Because you’re not wrong.”
“Not quite what I meant.”
“No?”
She leaned forward on her knees, smiling conspiratorially. “I don’t mean to shock you, but I think some people,” she said, “didn’t come for the quidditch.”
“So they’re like you, then.”
She was startled; her mouth parted.
“Supporting their friends,” he said. “House spirit. Et cetera.”
“You are not Parvati’s friend.”
“I might be.”
“You might be?”
“Yeah, I might be.”
“Mm. And would that sudden change in relations have anything to do with her blowing kisses at you?”
He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She gave a snort of disgust. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Am I.”
“And shallow.”
“Shallow, you say?”
“Meaning vain. Easily flattered. Conceited.”
“Careful, I’ve still got to fly straight.”
“Well, you can always go talk to Parvati, if you’d like a change of pace.” Her head cocked sideways, rueful. The corner of her mouth twisted.
He was aware that this was not precisely a friendly tenor of conversation. He was speaking a bit too low, and she was a bit too drawling, and there was a kind of — pleasant tension to it, like they were competing for something. It was a game of feints, like a drill or a practice, where you could say anything except the reason you were playing. You could point at the tension so long as you called it something else.
But it wasn’t illegal, a bit of flirting. Between friends. George and Angelina flirted, sometimes, and they were platonic as it came. Lavender would flirt with a skrewt. At any rate, Hermione certainly didn’t seem bothered by it — she was back to her book in a moment, anyway — and so he was safe, the whole thing was safe, it was deniable, which meant he didn’t have to stop.
It wasn’t a change. Just a transposition.
“MALFOY!”
Angelina nearly bowled him over. “YOU! BLOND TOSSER! SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO PLAY QUIDDITCH IF YOU’D LIKE TO JOIN US—”
“Coming, Johnson, Merlin—”
“—IF I WANTED SOMEONE TO SIT ON A BROOMSTICK AND JABBER I COULD GET PEEVES TO FLY YOUR SLOT, HE’D BE A DAMN SIGHT FUNNIER—”
“Alright, I said, alright—”
“—KNOW BLOODY WELL IF YOU’D PULLED THIS WITH OLIVER HE’D TAKE THE SKIN OFF YOUR TAINT AND DON’T THINK I WON’T—”
She harried him back to the goalhoops, bellowing. Lavender’s clique gave a raucous burst of laughter.
Ron was finishing his keeper’s tryout. He wasn’t showy; he had great height, long reach, and a solid, dependable coverage of the keeper’s box. He’d only missed one, and it was Draco’s, which he’d changed up at the last minute to a spinning backhand — a tricky switch-up that no keeper at the school had ever comfortably got their hands on, and so no great shame to miss.
Angelina rounded out the tryouts with a chaser’s scrimmage. She divided the candidates into teams of four and had them fly five-minute scrambles, pulling out the strongest keepers from the shootout to guard the goals. Two of these being Ginny and Ron.
Ginny flew well, but she kept darting off the line to help out her chasers — couldn’t particularly blame her, given the state of them — and finally Angelina whistled her out.
“Stay in your box!”
“But I had a shot!”
“What you have are chasers! It’s their shot, not yours!”
“It would’ve been my shot if I’d made it!”
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Angelina shouted, checking her watch. “Next time you’d better make it, then. Next up! Stockton, Cattell, Harris! Yates, to the box—”
A commotion was happening on the ground. A short woman in a pillbox hat marched out of the gates, her kitten heels sinking awkwardly into the soft earth of the pitch. She squinted up at them, her face pinched, and then started waving her hands and hopping up and down.
Angelina groaned.
“What’s she want?” Harry snapped, drawing up alongside Draco.
“Dunno, but bet you we will soon,” said Katie grimly. Angelina soared down and dismounted neatly in front of Umbridge, whereon they broke at once into a very fast, gesture-heavy conversation. “Hope Angie keeps her head.”
Umbridge was shorter than Angelina, and had come directly from the castle, for her full suit and frilled jabot stood sorely out of place among the uniforms and training pinnies. Grass stains on her pink suede heels proclaimed the great personal inconvenience she had undertaken to make the visit, and, as it happened, the points of her heels kept sinking into the earth, requiring her to yank them out every few seconds, a task that obviously did only good things for her disposition.
“But as your professor, I am burdened with a duty of care,” she cried. “And I am afraid it is no use! You may submit an application to use the field if and when the Gryffindor team has followed the requisite procedures!”
“I got McGonagall’s permission for this,” said Angelina, in the cool hard tone of one past her natural reserves of patience, and fast racking up debts. “It was all checked out. I got the forms.”
“But Professor McGonagall must be ignorant, then! For you have not followed the rules, Miss Johnson! I do not want to see you make mistakes that could jeopardize the children of this school!”
“What mistakes?” demanded Fred, landing hard next to Angelina. He stood by her shoulder, looming — drawing attention, incidentally, to the fifteen inches and two stone that he had on Umbridge, to say nothing of the very large bat in his hand.
“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Weasley,” said Umbridge. “Miss Johnson may explain to you—”
“She says the rules say we’ve got to register our brooms,” snapped Angelina. “Which we’ve never done before, by the way.”
“Possibly because you have never before been helped by a competent administrator!” said Umbridge helpfully. “But that has changed!”
“Madam Hooch is our ref,” said Katie.
“As I said,” said Umbridge, after a pause, “though I find it dreadfully unprofessional to name names, it is patently clear that the instruction you have received is quite lacking! But I suspected as much. In fact, as soon as I harbored that suspicion, I at once hurried to review the quidditch rulebook for you. I care deeply to ensure the safety of each and every Hogwarts student, including those who indulge in activities I personally consider very silly.”
“Thanks ever,” muttered Fred.
Umbridge smiled at him. “Yes, Mr. Weasley,” she said. “I think some thanks would do nicely, in fact. Since I have saved you all from many serious injuries!” A pause. “That will be: ‘Thank you, Professor Umbridge.’”
“Thank you,” said Angelina, “Professor Umbridge.”
“Ah, gratitude. It is music to the ears of any who work with children! Now. You are all dismissed to return to the castle, where I will generously extend the office deadline to register your broomsticks with my office to seven o’clock tonight—”
“Why’re we registering them with your office?” demanded Harry, soaring down beside Katie. He hopped off the broom midair, swung it behind his back, and dropped elegantly with a soft thud. Umbridge squeaked in surprise. “What does the Defense professor have to do with quidditch?”
“As you would know if you had been here earlier, Mr. Potter — I — what is that?”
She was staring at his broomstick.
“It’s a Nimbus One,” he said, with a touch of pride. His chest swelled. “Mint condition.”
Umbridge’s violently pruned eyebrows became tiny alpine peaks.
“A Nimbus One,” she whispered, as glee blossomed on her face. “A Nimbus One! My goodness. Why, Mr. Potter, you must know that the Ministry has prohibited competitive use of old Nimbus models for years!”
“What? No, it’s fine — it flies like brand new—”
“They have a steering defect! Banned from competitive use, without a license! You will report it to me at once for confiscation!”
“Hang on!”
“Wait a minute!”
“You can’t take his broom,” said Angelina, outraged. “That’s team equipment!”
“Not going forward!” said Umbridge delightedly. “Where did you even buy such a thing? The only remaining Nimbus Ones for purchase are on the black market. My, my — have you been naughty in your back-to-school shopping, Mr. Potter?”
Harry clutched the broomstick and took a half-step back.
“I didn’t. It was a gift,” he said feebly. “It was from — from a—”
From Professor Minerva McGonagall, who would have sooner snapped it on her knee than consign it to Dolores Umbridge’s pink claws.
“It was from a family member,” said Draco shortly. Harry relaxed infinitesimally.
Umbridge pursed her lips. “Whoever they are, your family should take a greater interest in your wellbeing,” she sniffed. “As I have. Never mind; it doesn’t matter. A Ministry customs sweep will identify—”
“You can’t do that!”
The team turned, as one, and cleaved in a quick curtain-sweep of red robes: Hermione came steaming through them, her cloak snapping over the grass.
“You,” she repeated hotly, “can’t do that. Professor.”
“Miss Granger! I was unaware that you were on the quidditch team. Or are you trying out?”
“Harry’s broom is private property,” she blurted. “You can’t take it.”
“Really, now? Mr. Potter, do you have the title? Do you know,” added Umbridge conspiratorially, “what a title is?”
“It doesn’t matter if he has the title,” snapped Hermione, before Harry could open his mouth. “You can’t ask for it unless you have reasonable suspicion it’s being used to commit a crime.”
“Excuse me! Excuse me! Miss Granger! Rule Ninety-Four, Section Two, Part C-Four of the Hogwarts Handbook expressly states—”
“The Hogwarts Handbook isn’t law,” said Hermione brusquely. (Fred clutched George’s shoulder in shock.) She shouldered in front of Angelina, scowl blazing in the harsh wash of the afternoon sun. “And the rule you’re citing doesn’t even apply, anyway, broomstick registration only applies for students using Hogwarts funds to buy a broom. Harry didn’t. It’s his property. He’s free to use it, or any other Nimbus, or even a — an enchanted teaspoon, if he wants.”
“Excuse me! Rule Ninety-Four, Section Two, Part C-Six of the Hogwarts Handbook makes very clear—”
“That administrators retain discretion to disqualify broomsticks on safety grounds, yes, obviously, but there’s a due process requirement to that, you can’t just go around benching the whole team because you don’t like the spit of a Comet Sixty,” said Hermione crossly. At any other time, in any other context, Draco would have whirled around and demanded to know when she learned what a Comet Sixty was. “You have to issue a formal citation, which you haven’t, and give them ample time for compliance, which you haven’t, and provide them with alternative equipment to use during the inspection period, which you haven’t, and, lastly, either you knew all of that before you came here, or you clearly never made it to Part C-Seven.”
She took a deep breath and added, after a collective beat of astonishment: “Professor.”
Umbridge’s mouth looked like leather that had been left out in rain. Harry was practically glowing. Angelina was gazing at Hermione like she wanted to sweep her up and propose marriage.
“Quidditch,” said Umbridge, silk-soft, “is an inherently unsafe activity.”
“As is climbing a moving staircase,” said Hermione.
“It is responsible for countless injuries every year—”
“Statistically insignificant margins, lower than muggle football.”
“—encourages brutality—”
“It’s good exercise.”
“—and distracts students from their studies.”
“It builds athleticism,” said Hermione desperately. “And teamwork. It boosts morale.”
“It is useless frivolity—”
“It’s a Hogwarts tradition,” she blurted.
Umbridge stopped, and eyed her warily.
“It’s been around for — for centuries. Sicne before the Norman Conquest. It’s our legacy, as British wizards, it’s — our heritage.”
Umbridge’s pillbox hat had begun to cant backward on her head. She adjusted it delicately, considering, and then sniffed.
“A good point,” she agreed. But she continued: “Tradition is no excuse for unsafety. I will expect to see forms documenting the make and model of all broomsticks currently in use on my desk by eight o’clock on Monday, and if I find a cause for concern, I will not hesitate to confiscate the dangerous equipment in question.”
“Fine,” she said shortly. “They’ll do that. But technically, Madam Hooch should be—”
“And you’ll have detention, Miss Granger.”
Silence. Stone cold, frigid with shock. Hermione flinched like she’d been slapped, though that probably would’ve been kinder.
Hermione had never had a detention. Everyone on the team, including Draco and Harry, had been punished for infractions of varying seriousness; everyone had seen their fair share of lines. But Hermione had kept her nose clean. She had been polite and orderly in classes, almost never used magic in the hallways, and observed the dress code like scripture. Breaking rules, she could, and did; but in terms of public infractions, her record was spotless.
Nearly spotless, now.
“No,” she said, reduced to simple denial. “No, I— I can’t.”
“For insubordination and rudeness to a teacher,” said Umbridge, “as well as general uppityness! We will work on that together tomorrow evening. Report to my office at nine o’clock.”
“But—”
“Would you like another one?”
Hermione closed her mouth.
“Very good,” said Umbridge, and it sounded not unlike a word of praise for a pet.
It couldn’t take that much force to shatter a broomstick on someone’s face, he thought. They weren’t known for durability, broomsticks. Or faces.
Hermione’s expression was no less painful than a faceful of wood shrapnel.
Umbridge smiled at them and trotted off the field in the same direction she’d come. Hermione turned around slowly. The team swarmed to murmur consolations, but she didn’t reply.
“It wasn’t your fault, kiddo.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong—”
“—took the heat for us, I’m sorry—”
“Can probably spring you from that detention—”
“—dungbombs under her desk—?”
“Hell, we’d do it even if you weren’t—”
“Granger.”
She winced and held up her hand. He stopped.
Hermione bit down hard on her cheek, curled her fingers into her fist, and stuck it to her side. Then, stiff-shouldered, she strode off the pitch.
It was all intimidatingly stoic; or, rather, it was, right up until she passed the goalposts, and broke into a run.
The common room bubbled that evening with anticipation of the upcoming weekend at Hogsmeade. Plans circulated for exploratory adventures through the castle’s corridors, quidditch skirmishes, picnics on the lawns and punting expeditions on the lake. Rumor had it there was going to be a party. Draco listened to none of them. After dinner, Hermione had shouldered her bag and with a stiff wordless march had removed herself to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where the hopes and sympathies of Gryffindor Tower went with her.
Others had trotted along like lost sheep back to the common room, and taken up a circle near the fireplace. Harry had brought her leftovers from a dinner she hadn’t touched, and Ron was doing his real, God-honest best to start the Transfiguration homework without her, which was something she had been asking him to do for four years without success. He had answered three questions in two hours and asked Draco for help on two, but that didn’t make it less laudable.
He had hoped she might be back before his prefect rounds with Blaise, but when ten o’clock came, the portrait door remained empty.
“I hope Hermione’s alright,” said Neville, who sat on the floor by the fireplace, his cheek pillowed in his hand. He had the Potions homework rainbowed around him in a hemisphere of woe, and had been jotting down answers in between feedings of his Mimbulus Mimbletonia. “I remember my first detention. Snape made me scrub cauldrons.”
“A bold choice to let you near them, really,” said Draco, “considering how many you’ve melted.”
“F-fourteen and counting.”
“Don’t say that like you’re proud of it.”
“Sorry.”
The door opened again, and more first years piled in, several of them wringing evidence of Peeves’s water balloons from their robes.
Harry followed Draco’s gaze, and checked over his shoulder.
“She should be back soon,” he said.
“I know that.”
“It’s almost ten. She’ll be done any minute.”
“I am, again, aware of that.”
“She’ll be fine,” he said, unconvincingly. “It’s an ego thing.”
“I dunno,” said Neville, frowning at what appeared to be a two-sentence answer to a question with ten lines of space. “Umbridge is no joke. My gran knows her— she’s a member of the Old Guard at the M-M-Ministry. The bloke before her went out in a big scandal right before she was promoted. Big Pop politician with a spotless record, everybody wants him for M-Minister one day, and then one day, he resigns. It’s odd, my gran thinks, anyway.”
“I’ve noticed your grandmother has something of an antiestablishment streak,” said Draco, turning a page.
“Oh, yeah. She marched in the Squib Riots in the s-s-sixties.”
“Augusta Longbottom? The pureblood? In the Squib Riots?”
“She set fire to a building, once,” said Neville proudly. Then, glumly: “Probably’ll do the same to me, if I don’t p-p-pass Potions.”
The hour-bell tolled ten times. Draco checked his watch, checked the door again, and jogged his knee.
“Oi. Go on,” said Ron quietly. “We’ll take care of her.”
That rankled him. Not the sentiment, which was admirable, nor even the offer, which was embarrassingly observant, and frankly made him chafe at his own apparent obviousness; but it was something about the way Ron said care, a sort of velvety helplessness that suggested more than it ought.
He rose from his seat.
“I’ll be back at midnight,” he said coolly. “Tell her where I am.”
Ron examined his work. “Think she knows, mate.”
“Would you still tell her?”
“I mean, sure, but she’s going to tell me off for acting like she doesn’t know it, like I’m the dummy—”
“Ronald. I’m asking you to tell her.”
Ron paused, and his voice was light. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever. I’ll let her know.”
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. And he swept out of the room, ignoring Harry’s polite and embarrassed cough.
At five past ten, he found Blaise lounging at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, buffing his nails with a silver file.
“Malfoy! I say! It’s five past. Do you expect me to wait an age?”
“You were half an hour late last week.”
“And I said I was very sorry for it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” agreed Blaise, and continued not to. “Ready to go cheat some poor girls out of a good snog?”
Draco’s foot was level with his head; it would have been very easy to kick him. He sighed and rounded the banister.
“I don’t like you.”
“I haven’t given you the chance.” He sprang to his feet and sauntered along behind Draco. “I’m a perfect delight once you get to know me. Shame you won’t; Theo says I’m not to talk to you.”
When he stopped, it gave Blaise a chance to catch up with him.
“What’s Nott’s problem?” he said flatly.
“Lord Merlin. How long do you have?”
“I meant with me.”
“Personally? Nothing. But I’m still forbidden from trying to sleep with you—”
Draco closed his eyes.
“—or inviting you to the commons, or answering any questions you might ask about him. I told him he was an awful narcissist to assume we’d be gossiping about him on prefect patrols, but then again: here we are.”
“It’s amusing that he thinks I would want to talk to him at all.”
So Theo hadn’t told the other Slytherins what he’d done. He wondered if Pansy knew. Daphne didn’t, but he happened to know she wasn’t talking to Theodore, and the rest of his coterie, it seemed, had been kept in the dark. There were many things about their little clade he didn’t understand, and he could admit now that it was too late to really try.
There were a few levels of dungeons to scour. Torches studded fathoms of stony, dripping darkness like small solar systems, revolving in and out of sight from corridors, shielding the metallic smell of wet stone and mold with woodsmoke. The halls narrowed the deeper they plunged, as if the castle increasingly resented their intrusions the deeper they went, and tried to squeeze them out back the way they came. Staircases and doors of identical make slipped past in dizzying circles, and if Draco didn’t know it, it would have been a nightmare. Blaise strolled along like each hallway was its own gala carpet, his earrings jingling cheerfully in the cold silence.
Patrol was less interesting than it sounded. They checked in empty classrooms and behind tapestries for students, knocked on bathroom doors, cast detection charms. Draco took some pleasure in throwing doors open with Bombarda, which on one go had scared a pair of sixth years so badly that they knocked over a desk. The Slytherin common room was ensconced behind its usual brick wall, and no one sequestered in the dozens of tiny cupboards and alcoves near the Potions room, including the locked door to the undercroft, which Draco insisted on checking, despite Blaise’s whinging about efficiency and beauty sleep.
It was perhaps no surprise, then, that there were not many Slytherins out of bed, save one or two first years wandering back from the library. Points were docked, scoldings were given, and they scampered home.
In one vaulted stairwell, the ripped echoes of weeping wafted from the floor below. Draco peered down and saw a dark head bent into a small set of arms.
“Who’s there?”
The head snapped up. He came down the stairwell, and found himself staring down into the wet, red-ringed eyes of Pansy Parkinson. They regarded each other with shared dismay and embarrassment.
“My God,” she said thickly, “your sense of timing should be sold to weapons manufacturers. Hello, Draco.”
Blaise came strolling up behind Draco, and startled. “Merlin, Pansy,” he said, one hand at his throat. “Wear a bell.”
“No. Dock points and go away.”
“While you’re crying?” he inquired. “I would never go after a woman in such a delicate, emotional condition.”
“Go choke on a giant’s cock,” she said warmly, standing up, “and then piss off, bugger yourself, and die, in whichever order excites you least. I simply cannot handle you tonight, and I have better things to do than try.”
“Like soaking a hanky?”
“See, this is the part where you say, ‘Get back to bed,’ and I say, ‘you’re the ones leering at a young woman alone out of bed after hours, wait until my father hears about this,’ and then you run off to preserve your reputation.”
“Speak for yourself. My mum would be delighted to hear I’d been harassing a young woman for a change.”
“Cass would skin you.”
“Ah, yes,” said Blaise, stroking his ring finger unsubtly. “The future Mr. Parkinson. It seems I’m not the only one who’s forgotten him.”
Pansy wasn’t wearing her ring. She shoved her hand into her pocket and sneered.
“Well?” she snapped at Draco. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
There were few people he could remember liking less than Cassius Warrington. He could imagine very few girls he considered deserving of Warrington’s affection, and that included Pansy, regardless of her many faults.
He had left Draco in an undercroft to bleed out with Gregory Goyle and a lead pipe. He had also said something to Hermione for which Draco still owed him a visceral debt, and interest had been accruing hastily since.
“Should I?” he said coolly.
“You should. I’m first in our year to get a ring. Holleen’s so jealous she could vomit.”
“Which I’m sure has made you quite courteous.”
“I’ve taken to leaving the diamond out on my nightstand, so she can see it when she goes to sleep,” said Pansy. “I hope it’ll motivate her to do something about those boils.”
“Charming.”
“Why should I be? I did it,” she said, with an edge in her voice. “I got it. I got the thing, I won. I have the best breeding, and that’s why I’ve got a ring and no one else has one, because none of them are as good as me—”
“Parkinson—”
“Why should I make them feel better about it? Boohoo, cows! I’m the best!”
Apropos of nothing, he remembered a girl with pigtail braids and a round collar like a doll’s, sitting on a tree root by a Samhain bonfire, saying awfully big things about a future she knew nothing of. He remembered a Gryffindor boy who had said them, too, and only half meant them. He hadn’t had the wisdom to wonder at the time if she only half-meant them, too.
If he could reach back and pull that boy into the future by the scruff of his collar, and hold him there to observe each other, he didn’t know that either of them could have contained their disgust.
Blaise withdrew his handkerchief and placed it on the stair beside her. She scoffed and kicked it away.
“Tell your parents you won’t do it,” said Draco flatly.
“Why in the wretched name of God would I do that?”
“Because you’re obviously miserable, and your father dotes on you. He won’t force you to marry at fourteen.”
“I’m not marrying him now, dullard. I get to graduate and everything, like a real girl; that’s what my father’s doting gets me, more time. But I can’t say no, nor would I.”
“Why not?”
“Because then he’ll go marry Maude Rosier! Obviously! Her family was after him for months, he could get them back in a heartbeat if I jilt him!”
He braced the bridge of his nose. “Refresh me. Am I meant to give a damn what happens to Maude Rosier?”
“No, but I am, because if he marries Maude, then she can’t marry Peter Selwyn.”
“And the seventh seal shall break?”
She squinted. “I understand that your abode is located under the world’s biggest, heaviest rock, but even rocks get newspapers. Maude and Peter? Me and Cassius? You already know about Crabbe and Millie.”
He hadn’t been paying attention to gossip, that summer; he’d been preoccupied trying to learn how to not die, and he was needled by the implication that he was somehow foolish for it.
“Only the official matches are public,” she said. “But I’ll tell you, because I’m very smart and I know everyone’s secrets: the Fawleys and the Goyles have been orbiting each other since July, and Gemma was seen out with Greg at two balls in August. Odin Davis is angling to nab Theo for Tracy, after all that business with the League, but — for one, good bloody luck — and for two, with Sibelius in Azkaban, Theo’s been operating as head of household, and he’s stalling.”
“No clue why,” remarked Blaise. “Tracy’s lovely. My favorite girl in our year.”
“Of course you like her, she’s a slattern.”
“You’re such a chauvinist, Pans.”
“Anyway, you see the picture. I can’t reject him, my parents will never find anybody for me.”
“There’s a fair sight more than five eligible bachelors in Britain,” he said.
“Not that qualify,” she said, frowning. “You’re practically the only free agent left, and my parents know better than to try you, after what happened with the Greengrasses.”
Draco felt a headache kick up in the overtaxed quadrant of his brain responsible for juvenilia and subterfuge. “What?”
“The offer? For Daphne? Duh? Merlin’s balls, this was literally all that happened to me in August, I can’t believe you never even heard.”
“An offer to marry her?”
“Rumor is that they offered Astoria,” said Blaise blandly, “because of Daph’s unfortunate condition, et cetera, but Lady Malfoy said a six year engagement was too long, so then they did come back with Daphne, but Lady M said they should have led with the older, because if nothing was wrong they would’ve offered her first. Which put paid to that. Silly twits, trying to pull one over on a Black — but of course, the Fawleys heard the Greengrasses had gone for it, so they threw in their older girl—”
“Didn’t even get an answer, though. Small wonder. Irena’s a lesbian.”
“Allegedly.”
“Allegedly, yes.”
“I’m not marrying an eleven-year-old,” said Draco, with rare passion. “Which was not a sentence I imagined I’d have to utter when I woke up this morning, so thank you both, sincerely, for the occasion.”
“You’re welcome,” said Blaise. He turned to Pansy. “Here’s one thing I never understood. Why not Theodore?”
“For Astoria? Not uninteresting. It’d suit, and it’d keep Daphne in the fold, but the issue the Greengrasses are having with Tori is it’ll be an age until she graduates, and with everything that’s happening, no one wants to wait—”
“For you, silly bird.”
“Lord! I don’t expect you to understand why that’s a horrible idea,” she said, “since you don’t have a brother. And neither do I. Which is a good thing, because if I had one, I’d still love Teddy more.” She folded her jumper over her arm primly. “Also, just to shut you up: my father asked. Teddy said no.”
“Really? I daresay he’s off the girls, then. I always said, if it wasn’t you or Greengrass, it wouldn’t be anybody.”
“Don’t get excited. He’s not your type.”
“Scottish?”
“Real,” she said coldly. She drew herself up, a motion Draco had seen Narcissa perform half a million times. “A grown-up, serious, real boy, with real duties and real problems. What would you do with a boy like that who needs you? What would you want with it? You, with your toys and your chocolates? He’d eat you up just by having you. You wouldn’t survive Theo’s love, you silly little man, you’d shrivel up like a fig in the sun.”
The hall rang with her echo. Her shoulders heaved.
Blaise, impassive, said only: “I resent little, rather,” and no more.
Fawley and Greengrass were Twenty-Eight families. So were Rosier and Selwyn. Two weddings like that in a generation would have been a spectacle. Four, five, even six — even their parents’ generation hadn’t been so closely tied, and theirs had seen two Blacks married to a Malfoy and a Lestrange.
“It’s too early,” said Draco.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For all of this. It’s too early.”
“Did you expect it to wait for you?” said Pansy, dripping frost. “I’m sorry you don’t feel prepared. I assure you, the rest of us don’t either, and some of us have much heavier crosses to bear.”
She hopped down the stairs and sank into the shade of the dungeons, the torchlight slipping away from her like a diver winnowing into the deeps.
When he returned to the common room, Hermione wasn’t there.
Ron and Harry remained at their posts by the fireplace, and when they saw him come in, he didn’t blame them for their expressions of dismay. He expected that his own face looked the same.
“She isn’t—”
“No,” said Ron. “We thought you might — if you ran into her, or something—”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,” he said. Then: “Detentions run late.”
“Of course they do,” Ron said hastily.
Draco requisitioned his preferred armchair from a quaking first year, and pretended to read.
The pearls of Alchemy magazine failed to distract him. Across the common room, doors seemed to creak every minute with new groups of stragglers, laughing their way up to the dorms or darting to the bathrooms, tactlessly existing and filling the common room with botherations, and distracting him from the stimulative properties of chimera hair. It was at least another half-hour before the portrait-door moved at all.
“Excuse me, Colin.”
She sounded tired. He looked up.
Hermione stumbled in from the portrait hole and leaned against the wall, her hands pressed behind her back. Her expression was bleak and pensive.
He stood up. The magazine slipped to the floor, forgotten.
“Granger.”
She winced. “Hello,” she said dully. “You’re up late.”
“I had rounds.”
“Oh, yes. How was that? I had mine with Ernie yesterday, it was a bit boring. He’s quite interested in inheritance law, though, you might talk to him about… about that, sometime, I told him you…”
She trailed off and bit on her cheek, eyes slipping into the distance. He felt oddly on-edge.
“What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“You know what—”
Ron craned his neck. “Hey, there she comes!” he called cheerfully. “Welcome to the club, bigmouth! Detention Crew! How’s it feel to earn the stripes?”
Hermione jerked her head and made a shuddering, furious sound, like tearing parchment. Ron broke off, shooting an alarmed look at Draco. Draco sidestepped him, crossing around the sofa to approach her.
“Granger—”
“Don’t— sorry. Please don’t. Just give me— I need a moment—”
“What happened? I thought it was a detention.”
“It was,” she said thickly, “certainly a detention. That is — that much is beyond question.”
“Granger, if you don’t explain yourself, I’m going to start making assumptions.”
He tried not to sound affected. It was probably not successful, because she tipped her head back to look at him, and a wave of hollow tiredness washed the distress out of her face. She flicked back her right sleeve.
“Assume away,” she said dully, and lifted her fist.
A thick row of cabled scarring split the skin of her hand, still shiny and brittle and fresh. Blood clotted in black lumps on the corners of each jagged carving. It looked like someone had taken a paper cutter to her skin, and used it to carve the words: I WILL NOT TELL LIES.
A hundred years passed. From far away he heard someone talking to him. It seemed to be increasing in volume.
The start of the hundred and first found him halfway out the portrait-hole, being hauled back by Harry’s steadfast grip on his robes.
“Unhand me.”
“Nope,” said Harry grimly.
“Unhand me now.”
“It’s ‘please,’ actually, but that’s still a nope.”
His wand was in his hand; he didn’t remember that.
“Release me, or you will be made to.”
“Very scary. Are you done?”
He wrenched his arm free and stood in the portrait-door, breathing deeply and carefully. When he recovered his ability to see, he found Harry glowering at him.
“Are you?” he snapped. “Because if you are, then get down here. We’ve a situation.”
Hermione was cradling her hand to her chest, watching him quietly. Her eyes were dark and unreadable. Ron looked sick. The common room had become a silent theater of horrified witnesses.
He stepped down. Harry exhaled in relief and hauled the portrait door shut.
“Give it here.”
Hermione twitched. “What?”
“Give it here,” Draco said calmly, and held out his hand. She extended it slowly, visibly wincing when she caught sight of the scars.
He took her wrist and settled the tip of his wand against her skin. “Episkey.”
“It won’t—”
The skin knit together, the scar shrinking into a line of glistening pink. A heartbeat later, the scars reemerged, splitting open the frail skin as if drawn by an invisible blade. She winced.
“It’s enchanted,” she said. “It won’t heal. I did try.”
“It’s… permanent.”
“I don’t think so. It’s better than it was an hour ago. My theory — one of them — is that it’s resistant to magical healing, so the student… remembers.”
Her professor had ripped open the back of her hand, and she had theories . Plural.
“The Hospital Wing—”
“Is closed,” said Hermione, “and I’m not going to wake up Madam Pomfrey for this. I don’t — I didn’t want anyone to see it, you see.”
“I don’t give a damn if she sees it or not.”
“Well, I do! And it’s my hand!”
“I can get some aloe,” Neville ventured meekly. “Lavender has some. I can borrow it.”
“Aloe’s for burns. Good thought, though. She needs muggle stitches,” said Harry. He radiated the calm, grave focus that came from seeing an awful thing he was used to. “D’you have rubbing alcohol?”
“I do,” croaked Lavender, rising from her armchair on trembling legs. “We — we use it to take off nail polish.”
“That’ll do. Katie, can I borrow one of your piercing needles? And sterilize it.”
“Yeah. Sec.”
“Get Hermione’s sewing kit, while you’re at it. Just need some of the thread. Not as good as sutures, but it’ll keep for a bit.”
“You can do stitches?” said Hermione, with understandable wariness.
“Sure I can,” said Harry. “The Dursleys have me do the mending. Nev?”
They hurried off to the dorms. Their footsteps crested and faded at the top of the stairs.
“Thanks,” said Hermione crisply, and made to take her hand back. Draco didn’t give it to her.
“Did she do it herself?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she croaked. Her eyes were faintly red, her nose flush, the rest pallored with exhaustion. No tears, though; she’d have cried alone, if she could.
There was nothing good enough that he could do. That was the problem. He wasn’t capable of anything as evil as she deserved, and he wasn’t good enough not to want to be. So he was useless. And she was bleeding. Which put a prong of fear deeper than he had expected, because it was a failure of an order he hadn’t expected.
He couldn’t fight. He didn’t want to fight. But he couldn’t save her, either, which meant he was good for nothing, of use to no one; he was hardly even a Malfoy, if he had no protection to offer her when she was bleeding. If he couldn’t stop it. He had walked into this castle with two goals for that year, and they were to stay alive and keep her out of danger, and he’d failed on the second before the first week was out. But then, he couldn’t save Harry in the Third Task, and so he had no idea what laughable mockery of confidence had made him imagine he could save her.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said sharply. “It’s… it’s quite obviously only one person’s fault, and it’s not… oh, hell.”
She ground her free hand into her eyes and gave a little laugh. “That,” she said, “will teach me to get detention.”
They were funny words, delivered with a touch of humor, but she was angry. She was angrier than he’d ever seen her, and he’d seen her as angry as he thought it was possible for a human being to be.
“We’ll tell Dumbledore,” said Ron hoarsely. “We’ll get him involved. He’ll do something.”
“No, he won’t.” Hermione was calm again. “He doesn’t have the power. That’s what the vote at the Ministry meant, by the way. I looked it up. The Hogwarts Special Inquisitor isn’t a faculty position, it’s a Ministry appointment. She’s a professor by courtesy, but even if he fired her, she’d still have a position at the school. That’s how he got them to drop the charges against Harry.” Her tone was wretchedly clinical.
Umbridge was a Ministry operative. Irremovable. Permanent. The Ministry’s will made manifest, sitting there on her hand, staining her fingers red.
“So — so we’ll talk to the Ministry, we’ll squeal—”
“Nobody at the Ministry cares if some muggle-born has a bit of odd scarring,” she said harshly. “Even if they did, I can’t prove she did anything. Who’s going to believe me? I don’t count.”
One day, it’ll be me. She’d said that, once.
He still had his wand. He pressed his thumb flat on the grip and it coursed gently up his fingers, the magic, pleading to be used, helpless to a problem that he knew very well it couldn’t solve.
“Then— then— I mean, we’ll do something, I’ll write my parents—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. Hermione’s wrist was a warm weight on his palm and he closed his fingers around it, drawing a flush to the skin. “They couldn’t change anything.”
“We can’t do nothing!”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Here,” said Harry, hurrying down with Neville, whose arms were full of bandages and tiny pots. He sprawled them out on the table and sat down. “First thing, you want to get it clean, so you don’t catch anything — I know you know that,” he added, “but Madam Pomfrey always talks while she’s doing things — says it calms people down. I dunno if it works on you—”
“Respectfully, I can’t think of much that would calm me down right now, Harry.”
“Got it. This is going to hurt, by the way,” said Harry evenly, and then, with the firm, unapologetic force of someone who knew it was crueler to be slow, he swept the cotton pad over her scars.
“Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow!”
“There you go,” he said, handing off the pad to Neville. “Good job.”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“I’m not. Katie?”
He threaded the needle with a neat flick of a seeker’s hand, then carefully pinched the skin of her hand together. “Pomfrey gives us a sticker, sometimes,” he remarked, “but I don’t reckon that’s in the cards.”
Hermione made a scathing sound.
“Sorry. It’s a thing. For me. Injuries, humor. Moony says it’s inherited.”
“I thought,” she said, and she was blinking like she had an irritant in her eyes, “I thought — you know, it was pretty stupid, but I had this thought: ‘She can’t really hurt you. She’s a teacher, and you’re a student. She’s here to protect you.’ Isn’t that — ow — isn’t that stupid?” She winced as Harry tightened the knot. “You’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t you? Honestly. How stupid could I possibly be?”
“It’s not your fault,” said Ron.
“I know that.”
“I know. I was just saying,” he said. “In case it was there.”
Draco didn’t know muggle first aid. He hadn’t bothered to learn. Someone else would have. They would have known how to help her. Possibly there were several people who she should have preferred to stand at her side during this particular trial.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of them. But was the one holding her hand, so she was going to get the few promises he could make, for whatever they were worth.
“She’s going to regret it,” he said.
The danger was lapping at his knees, and he found — refreshingly enough — that he didn’t care. It didn’t seem real, in that particular moment, or if it did, it wasn’t half as real as the tears on her face, the blood on her hand. It was nothing, the danger, compared to that.
Her mouth twitched. She cleared her throat and swiped something glittering from her cheek. “Somehow, I suspect she’s never regretted anything in her life,” she said. “Much less hurting someone like me. If you know what I mean.”
“I don’t care.”
“Draco—”
“And the underground thing, too. The defense group. I’ll do it. I’ll help you. Whatever you want.”
Her head lifted sharply, like a startled bird. “Don’t do it because you feel sorry for me. I don’t want it to be out of pity.”
“That’s not why.”
“Fine, but if you don’t believe it’s a good idea, be honest.”
It probably wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was a line of swollen scars running under her knuckles and the prim little smile on Umbridge’s face, like she could taste her tears, and the fact that he would have set the Defense classroom on fire with its professor locked inside it if he thought it stood a chance of undoing either one.
He knew how to keep a secret. He’d more practice in the trade of secrets than any of them. And he had watched them all walk into danger without him before — Hermione, half-drowned from the bottom of a frozen lake; Harry, vanished in a burning clearing with Viktor Krum; Ron, standing in front of a Death Eater’s curse — and he had watched the threshold of his tolerance for it sink. Fear had carved it away, inch by inch, until now it was nearly as low as the rest of them.
“It’s a good idea,” he said.
Her smile was a fleeting thing, a flash of a knife in the dark, hidden in the quick dip of her head.
When she put her free hand on his wrist and squeezed it, it was the first time she’d touched him unprompted, on purpose, since the Hogwarts Express. And held on tightly, too, trustingly, without horror or wariness. She held him like she needed him there. The relief was poignant.
He slid his hand back along her wrist until he held hers, lightly, palm to palm. If they were doing this the traditional way, he’d kiss her hand, and she’d kiss his, and it would seal a gentlemen’s agreement. If they were true adherents of the old school, they would slit their hands and shake with them, fixing the writ in blood.
She was anything but traditional, however, and he didn’t like audiences.
So he smoothed some blood from her knuckle with his thumb. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.
The fire snapped. There were murmurs in the common room, murmurs from the stairs, and the walls of the castle, their ancient bones of wood and marble, groaned as if in horror at the things being done inside their arms. Outside, the wind howled, and howled, and howled.
-Bit later than usual! Sorry, all. Ran around all day and just when I got home, Wi-Fi went out. Technically, it’s still Friday in America, so I’m electing to count this as on-time.
-“But if the Squib Riots took place in the 60’s wouldn’t Frank be like five when his mom—” Yes? And? Give him a helmet and one of those toddler leashes, he’ll be fine.
-The reception to the last chapter, as usual, has blown my socks off, boarded them on a space shuttle, and rocketed them into a neighboring solar system. I am de-socked. I am sockless. I am rendered unsocked by you, and your generosity, and your unfailing kindness. I would answer every one if I could. Instead I will offer to you a pair of the warmest, thickest, nicest socks, like Albus Dumbledore sees in the Mirror of Erised.
-Pansy is incredulous that Draco isn’t subscribed to whatever the pureblood version of deuxmoi is. Blaise, meanwhile, lives for it.
-I’ve often felt the need to include this disclaimer, but especially so this chapter, considering some of the language that’s getting slung around the dungeons, so here it is, once and for all: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY PANSY PARKINSON ARE HER OWN AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF THE AUTHOR, GREENTEACUP, THEIR PARENT COMPANIES OR RESPECTIVE AFFILIATES.
-Also known as: 1995, though better than most that came before it, was still not the nicest year to be a teenage girl, no matter what House you were in.
-Next chapter: “The Hogwarts Resistance.” Featuring: a Hogsmeade trip, a fancy piece of jewelry, and a cameo by Marietta Edgecombe.
Bình luận
0