Chapter 64: The Room of Requirement
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
There was a problem. Several problems. A set of infinitely divisible problems, stacked in a fractal formation, and also on fire.
He had been given to understand from a young age that his mother and father had drifted together in a celestial confluence of pleasure and destiny, joined their fortunes, and never thenceforth been parted. He had never contemplated the particulars of their meeting, or courtship. That wasn’t important. It seemed obvious that when two people were well-suited, the inevitable would happen, and some cosmic chorus of witnesses would politely applaud from their box seats.
Aside from them, the evidence was depressing. Fred and Angelina had some sort of situation configured, but it was horribly particular, and seemed to involve a lot of yelling and brotherly tussling. Katie smuggled girls up the staircase sometimes and hung a sock on the door, but they were all ushered out by morning. Seamus and Lavender had been on dates, but Lavender flirted indiscriminately, so whatever Seamus brought to the table couldn’t be all that appealing.
And Hermione was complicated.
Sometimes, in the library, he would find her staring into the middle distance with her lip caught between her teeth, and he would have to get up and pretend to fetch another reference text to stop himself from thinking about it, or better yet, doing something about it.
Which made it almost fucking impossible to concentrate on potionmaking, among other inconveniences. It also made it difficult to get to sleep. Sheets could generate unexpected degrees of friction.
Other times, while they were reading in the common room, she would tip over and put her head on his shoulder, usually because she was too tired to notice what she was doing; and the longer he allowed that to go on without moving, the more guilt he felt, as if it was something he were stealing from her.
This guilt failed to stop him from imagining anything vis-a-vis: the library. Or the sheets.
“I don’t think she likes Ron,” declared Daphne.
They were in the common room. Rain drizzled softly on the glass. He had his boots up on the table and Moste Potente Potions in his lap, making lazy annotations between lines of his godfather’s dark scrawl.
Daphne was painting her fingernails with a bit of muggle varnish, and every so often she would waggle her fingers at him to ask for a Drying Charm or an opinion, only one of which dignity permitted him to give.
“I don’t recall soliciting your opinion.”
“Then sulk more quietly.”
“I was being silent.”
“Only on the outside!”
“That’s where the sounds tend to be.”
“I have reasons. Don’t you want to hear my reasons?”
“No.”
She sulked, lacquering varnish. “There’s no need to be huffy,” she said huffily. “I know you think you’re terribly opaque, with your standoffish Victorian situation, but if you want other people to remain in — well, can’t say ignorance, I’m certain Harry’s noticed something and repressed it like a good little boy, but let’s try plausible doubt — then you can’t keep staring at Ronald like you’re going to kill him. It’s bad manners. Throw down your glove and duel him for her like a gentleman, or pack up your frowns, Obliviate yourself, and leave them to each other. I have no other advice.”
The tips of his ears heated. “This isn’t the nineteenth century. Gentlemen don’t duel over witches. For one thing, the witches tend to object.”
“Phooey! I wouldn’t!” she exclaimed. “I’d love to have some strapping gents clobber each other over me. I’d dine out on it for years! And frankly, I’d give anything just to have a crush. Better something fun and hopeless than nothing.”
“‘Fun and hopeless’ is meant to be encouraging, in this context?”
“I rather think I’d like a quidditch player, actually. Who would you advise? I wish that Oliver Wood were still here, he was gorgeous.”
“There are at least a dozen reasons we are absolutely not having this conversation.”
She twined a curl around her finger and smiled. “Indulge me,” she said, “or I’m going to start flirting with Harry.”
“Lord Merlin. Do you always open your negotiations with death threats?”
“No comment! He’s fit, and you’re not helping.”
“Fine. I’ve heard George Weasley is unentangled, you harpy. Your union will revolt me, but at least I won’t have to kill myself.”
“I don’t like the twins,” she said, frowning. “They’re not kind.”
“What, to Ronald? They’re his brothers.”
“I’m not like that with Tori.”
“You’re also not her brother.”
She fell silent. He lowered his quill, and braced himself.
“Would you care to discuss it?”
“No,” she said sharply, and shoved the varnish bottle to the side.
The wind whistled furiously in the eaves.
“You’re asking too much of her, you know.”
She worked her jaw, rolling her fingers to and fro in the light.
He dropped his eyes to the book, inferring her answer from silence. At the top of the page there was note in different ink, crosshatched over other instructions, as if Snape had scrawled it for want of anything else to write on: Vermicarnis.
It was underlined. Twice. It had no description except: For B.
Which was, of course, terribly intriguing. Though not much in the way of a spell description.
Presumably Snape would know, but he was never in his office to be asked; Draco had twice visited since the start of the year, and both times found him gone. Apparently he wasn’t spending his free hours in the castle.
The reasons for which didn’t bear thinking about. Knowing that his godfather was a spy was different from knowing that somewhere, at that moment, he was among Death Eaters, his life staked on a cover that an increasing number of people could break.
Draco, now, being one of them.
“Astoria annoys me,” remarked Daphne, drawing him out of reverie. “I adore her, but she can’t stand not to have her own way.”
He held his tongue, with difficulty.
“I mean, she’s a sweet girl. Truly. I love her to distraction. But when we were younger, she’d follow me around everywhere. Wouldn’t leave alone! I’d have friends over, Pansy, Te—Blaise, and the cousins, and so forth, and we’d want to go off on our own. But the minute we tried to leave, Tori would pitch a screaming tantrum — I mean ripping her hair out, beating herself against the wall — until Mummy ordered us to take her, just so it would stop. She was a horrible brat. We both were, but she was monstrous. And of course, she’d pretend to everyone else that she was a perfect angel. Because she so desperately wanted them to like her, you know? No one ever came to visit her, because she was so young, and she couldn’t go out to parties, like me; her disease was a bit more advanced, that’s why the chair… anyway, I played a mean trick on her once.” She blew on her fingers. “Pansy and I — and Teddy, of course — we wanted to go riding Daddy’s thestrals. Of course we couldn’t see them, but that’s part of the fun of it, if you’re tied in the saddle, it feels like you’re flying. Only Tori threw the biggest, loudest, nastiest fit, because it wouldn’t be fair; she couldn’t ride. So Pansy and I, we — oh, God, we were really such bitches — we told her we were going to go swimming, and we pushed her out all the way to the big wading fountain in the farthest part of the garden, where you could barely see the house, let alone hear it. And then we took some ropes and tied her chair to a tree, and left her there, and went riding.”
Daphne scraped off a smudge of varnish with her thumbnail. “Anyway,” she said casually, “it was so lovely and fun we rode until it got dark, and I hate to say we forgot about her. We were children, you know, we weren’t — we didn’t think. And when Mummy asked where she was, I — I was so scared of getting in trouble that I lied, and said I didn’t know.” She paused. “It was Teddy who finally went out and got her. But he didn’t tell Mummy what Pansy and I did; he just said that he’d heard her talking about swimming earlier, and had a hunch. And somehow — to this day, I’ve absolutely no idea how — he convinced Tori to back him up. She claimed she’d lost track of time. Never mentioned the fiasco again.”
He waited, but whatever point she had in mind, she believed it made; she tucked the varnish bottle into her bag.
“Teddy was always like that, though,” she said absently. “He made our problems go away. He’d smile all pretty, and snap his fingers, and everyone did what he wanted, especially Tori… That’s what worries me about her being alone with them. She just wants to feel liked, and she’s willing to be awful for it.”
He holstered his quill in the pot. “Well, you’re right, or you’re wrong,” he said briskly, dropping the book on the desk and lowering his feet. “Either Slytherin suits her or it doesn’t. Neither outcome rests in your hands. As with both you and I, a capricious piece of senile headgear has elected to create years of difficulty for her, and far be it for me to suggest that our lives should ever be easy. Speaking of which. It’s time for our routine endeavor in courting expulsion.”
She brightened. “You say that like you don’t love it.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” she averred, springing up. “And do you know, I suspect I’m starting to love it, too? It’s dreadful, but the whole enterprise has grown on me. Such excitement. And everyone’s so jolly all the time! Perhaps I’m more of a lion than I thought.”
“As watching Diggory trot around in his shirtsleeves has nothing to do with it, of course.”
“I said a ‘lion,’ Draco, not a nun.”
The seventh floor of Hogwarts glowed pale blue. The windows were soaked in the low-hanging sunshine of an October afternoon, like they were walking through a bridge into the sky. At the end of the hallway sat an undecorated stone wall.
Draco drew his wand and checked his corner. There was no one. The Marauder’s Map found Filch safely in his office, and Umbridge in hers. They were four stories of castle and half a thousand stairs away, and that was how he liked them.
“Clear?” hissed Hermione, ducking her head around the corner. He pushed it back, and she made a noise of irritation.
“If I’m checking a corner, do wait for me to check before you stick your head in it, please, Granger dear.”
“‘Do wait for me to check,’” she imitated, under her breath, and sidestepped him. “Someone thinks he’s Mad-Eye Moody.”
“Bothered, Minerva?”
She scoffed, which more or less proved his point.
The group milled around in the sunny space outside the wall, waiting for someone to do something impressive about it. Marietta started whispering to Cho.
He crossed twice before the wall. The request of I need a place to practice magic was slightly bled in with Make Ronald stop smirking, but he expected the Room could multitask.
Wrought-iron curlicues sprouted from the brick in oily black lacework. Hermione laughed, pleasantly surprised, as if she’d honestly expected him to take them to a big corridor in the middle of nowhere.
He raised his voice. “Everyone get inside, and step lively, as I will shut the door on you. Be advised that if your nose gets caved in, I am unlikely to notice and less likely to care.”
“He doesn’t mean that,” added said.
“In fact I do, and you can decide for yourself whose bluff you’d like to call.”
The doors parted at his touch.
It was a cathedral.
No, it wasn’t; only the light made it seem so, pouring through the triptych of red-and-gold stained glass at the far end of a massive hall, with a scalloped ceiling embroidered here and there with dangling grape-bunches of gas-lamps. Suits of armor stood in file under a barrage of sconces, and bookshelves enough for a lifetime of reading, or, for Hermione, a week. Embellishment of serpents coiled around the crown and foot of the Corinthian columns, and the flagstones were polished to reflection.
“Nice,” said Ron wisely. “Understated. Intimate.”
“D’you think the ceiling’s high enough?” said Harry, craning his neck. “Don’t want to bump my head.”
“It’s beautiful,” murmured Hermione, staring up at the stained glass.
Draco smirked at all of them, individually, and then at the group, broadly, which streamed in with appreciative murmurs. Even Fred gave a low whistle when he peered into one of the cabinets.
Harry climbed onto the center dais, glanced at the podium, and then shuffled in front of it, rather than behind.
“Thanks, everybody, for coming! Anyone not here? Anyone — no? That’s great. I was thinking the first thing we should do is Disarmers Charm. So, er — partner up, and have at.”
The crowd fell into disarray. Hermione cleared her throat. Harry stepped down to confer with her.
“Harry,” she whispered, “you need to show them how to do it.”
“What? It’s Expelliarmus. It’s simple.”
“Yes! For you! There are first years here!”
“Oh. Oh, right! Sorry, everyone! Let me just run through it, quickly, and I’ll show you… it’s Expelliarmus, right, and then there’s a jabby bit, like this…”
Fumbling, Harry vaulted back up to the dais and hurried through a demonstration of a Disarming Charm that made up for in enthusiasm what it lacked in any sort of academic use.
Hermione came over to stand beside him. He folded his arms and watched Colin Creevey enthusiastically hurtle a Disarming Charm clear over his partner’s head.
“Well,” she said, as the crowd began to mimic Harry, with results varying, “it’s… at least they’re practicing.”
“‘Practicing’ is astonishingly generous.”
“They’re trying!”
“Also generous.”
Harry hovered, but his suggestions trended vague and therefore unhelpful: “Decent grip, maybe hold it a little bit sideways,” or “think you’re aiming high, maybe work on that, I reckon.” They were kind but overly gentle, unwilling to admit of failure, and not much helpful to anybody, since it did not prevent them from failing the next time.
Ron was not much more useful, though he was better technically as an instructor; he could usually get a student to do what he wanted them to, and knew how to make them understand it, using words they could grasp; the sole problem being that he himself rarely knew what they should be doing, and so this skill was not fruitfully employed.
Hermione, after an observational period of increasing distress, bounded in to try and help, but her instructions were not much better: exactingly specific and long-winded, she gave Lavender almost two full minutes on everything she was doing wrong, which left her more angered than competent, and in any case forced Ron to intercede and take Lavender aside to fix her grip.
Draco leaned against one of the columns and supervised, tapping his wand against his thigh. As far as he was concerned, he had done his part in bringing them to the venue. He hadn’t the patience for pedagogy; he grew irritable when someone took too long answering a question in class. All the same, he didn’t find it particularly hard to identify when someone was doing something wrong; examining a guard for weaknesses was a hobby and a pastime, and exploiting them, a skill.
Dean, for instance, didn’t keep his feet still when he was casting. He stepped into the swing, likely a holdover from some kind of muggle sport in his past; it would take drilling to fix. Katie whipped her wand sideways instead of extending the point, which sent her spells arcing like quidditch passes. Fred and George were technically competent, but lacked discipline, and it showed in their sloppy wand movements. Seamus, meanwhile, could not produce a Disarming Charm to save his life; every spell he cast resulted in some kind of explosion. This was not as concerning as Hermione, who was trying to coach him, seemed to think; in Draco’s opinion, it was a gift with any number of uses.
The broader problem was this: they were children who had been locked in a castle under rigid discipline and threat of corporal punishment, without access to usual entertainment or indeed free communication with the outside world, for almost a month. And there were only so many ways you could possibly expect a human being to act.
Decorum died slowly. Fred and George’s drill turned into an all-out skirmish, and spilled over into Katie’s bout with Lee, who gave a gleeful cry and tackled Fred at the first provocation. Hermione ducked a stray cartwheeling charm from Dean and snapped at him, only to almost get bowled over by George.
Ron caught Hermione’s elbow to stop her from tipping over and shouted, “OI! SIMMER DOWN!” but it was no use. He turned to her, and said something that was inaudible through the burst of voices, but she nodded. His hand lingered on her arm long after she was standing on her own two feet. She had to look up a great deal to talk to him, and did, though he bent to listen to whatever it was she said. Abruptly, she broke into a tired laugh, gesturing at the Room behind her. Ron winked.
They could have been in a room by themselves, for all that the din bothered them.
Draco rolled off the pillar and slipped into the shadows of the room, tasting bitterness.
It constricted his throat. It nauseated him, more to the point, the very idea of it. Sat at the center of his head like a gravity well, drawing everything else into the dizzying orbit. Her smiling and touching Ron’s arm. Her hair splayed on his shoulder. Going up on tiptoe to— he wasn’t that masochistic.
He leaned against the back of the pillar and considered his wand, the long black point, the thousand wicked things it could do.
“Draco?”
It was Neville. He held his wand awkwardly in one fist, no grip that Hogwarts ever taught, and Draco cataloged three areas for improvement before he caught himself being helpful.
“What is it,” he said thinly.
“I was wondering if you had any a-a-advice, on the charm,” said Neville. “I just tried it with Daphne, and you’re good at Charms, s-s-so.”
It was worth pointing out that he had never volunteered to instruct anyone, but Neville was a considerable danger when left unattended at a cauldron, and this seemed similarly dire. At any rate, he at least knew Neville to be teachable, which was apparently more than one could say for Dennis Creevey, who had trouble telling his lefts from rights.
Draco sighed and crooked his fingers.
“…Is that a y-y-yes?”
“Let’s see it.”
Neville blanched. “What? On y-y-you?”
“No, I want you to try disarming the bloody wall.”
“W-w-what if I…?”
“Hurt me? I would truly and sincerely be impressed.”
Neville swallowed, found his courage, and stabbed it to its sticking place.
“Exp-elliarmus!”
It wasn’t actually terrible. Draco didn’t bother to deflect, out of interest as to whether it would succeed if it landed. It didn’t; it veered wide and shattered on the column.
“Try it again.”
Neville obeyed, jabbing his wand out like it was autonomous and malignant. His spell splashed, inert, into the flagstones.
“You’ve one problem.”
“Just one?” said Neville, much cheered.
“It’s significant.”
“Oh. W-w-what… is it the st-t-tutter? Gran says—”
“No. Your incantations are decent. Not great, mind you, but serviceable. Your problem is that you wince, and it makes you close your eyes.”
Neville blinked. “I do?”
“Unerringly. I’ll hand it to you: if your good habits were as reliable as your bad ones, you’d be a wizard to rival Merlin.”
“Okay, and — well, thanks, b-b-but — why? And what do I d-d-do about it?”
“No idea. Try to open them? Pretend you’re me or something. I don’t know.” He clapped Neville on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” said Neville, with unnerving sincerity.
Worrisome failure. He hadn’t meant to be helpful; he’d meant to crack a joke. People might come to suspect that he was some sort of associate teaching fellow in this ramshackle college of St. Potter’s.
He regrouped with Harry at the foot of the dais, where the leader was evaluating his pupils with a bit of despondency. The meeting had become mostly social; conversation had broken out in place of sparring, and few people were still bothering to practice spells. Ron hoisted Colin Creevey out of his way by the nape of his neck and stepped up on the dais, expression grim.
“If this is what we’re meant to fight You-Know-Who with,” he said, “we’re buggered.”
“Chin up,” said Harry vainly. “They’re doing… some things.”
A few spells flashed past, but they were accompanied by giggles and the teasing of students play-fighting.
“This is piss,” announced Ginny. Her hair was mussed and ashy from some sort of encounter with Seamus. “You lot need to pull it together.”
“We’re doing our best,” snapped Hermione.
“I know. It’s not bad, but it could be a lot better.” Ginny surveyed the room with a deeply critical eye. “I reckon they don’t respect you.”
“Oi!”
“Excuse you!”
“Speak for yourself, Ginevra,” said Draco mildly, not disagreeing.
“C’mon! You know how on the first day of Transfiguration, McGonagall always shows off the cat thing? And it gets a shout out of the first years, and it’s adorable? I mean, there’s a point to that, innit? She’s saying: ‘Hey, I’m good at this. I know more than you.’ This lot’s all used to watching you faff about with a pocket snitch in the common room. Reckon you got to do the same.” She used her wand to scratch her head. “For the young ones, at least. Dunno what to do about Fred and George.”
“I think McGonagall’s still working on that one,” said Hermione flatly, watching Fred make fish-faces inside his Bubble-Head Charm.
“A good point, well-made,” said Draco. “Alright, Potter. Go on and turn into a cat.”
Harry flipped him the bird while Ron sniggered. “Why don’t you do something, tosser?”
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘not my phooka, not my forest’?”
“No, because I’m normal,” said Harry. “Anyway, idiot, here’s your chance to show off. You’re always bragging about how Mummy taught you to duel.”
“Hey, there’s an idea,” said Ginny suddenly. “Harry, duel Draco.”
The expression on Harry’s face made Draco snicker.
“Seriously? I get why it’s him, on account of the dueling experience and everything, but why me? Why not Hermione? She’s best in Charms—”
“Because it’s not her they have trouble listening to,” said Draco dryly. “Granger and I happen to have a certain reservoir of authority here. If you hadn’t noticed, when she says jump, the first years are already four feet in the air.”
“Because she’s a prefect,” Harry muttered.
“Because she runs the Tower like a brigadier-general. Where have you been?”
“Come off it,” said Ron lightly, and when Draco flashed him a look, he added: “I mean, yes, but it’s easy for you to say when you’ve got the other badge, innit?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, just… c’mon. It’s always been a bit harder for the rest of us to get people to listen when we talk.”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with who’s prefect.” He was increasingly irritated. “Did you want to be a prefect?”
“No,” said Ron pointedly, “but it wasn’t like I ever had a shot at it, so I didn’t waste time hoping—”
“You had the same shot as everyone else.”
“Not under Umbridge, I didn’t!”
“McGonagall chooses the prefects,” said Hermione. “She wrote both letters. I’ve seen them.”
Ron paused. “Right,” he said, and the lightness was even more forced. “Sorry. I didn’t know that. Since I didn’t… yeah. I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine.”
“I mean, you would’ve gotten it fair and square, anyway. Any other year. With your marks, and your — everything. So. No offense.”
“Offense retroactively un-taken,” said Draco coolly.
There was another pause. Ginny was politely examining the middle distance. Harry looked like he longed to join her in it, but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the train collapse happening before them.
Ron frowned. “How’d you see his— oh.” His expression cleared, and it was even worse than a scowl, his little slouch. “I forgot. You got them when you were staying at the castle.”
“Manor,” said Draco, which would have been alright to start with; but Hermione said at the same time, “It’s a manor, actually,” and their unison plunged the whole conversation into a humiliated well of silence from which four unspeaking faces consulted each other helplessly for rescue.
Harry was looking at Ron, who was looking at Hermione, who was looking at no one, and rather avidly, too. Ginny and the middle distance had become so intimate that they might announce the wedding any minute.
Draco tapped his fingers on his wandgrip.
“Fine,” he said briskly. He shrugged out of his robe and tossed it over a bench. His wand glided out of its sheath with a quiet snick and he spun it around two fingers, marching down from the dais. “Get everyone out of the way. Potter, we start at ten paces.”
Ginny raised her fists. “Thank Merlin. EVERYONE CLEAR OFF! DEMONSTRATION!”
Clamor filled the hall. The crowd drew back and settled itself on the stairs of the dais, whispering iniquitously, grouped in a huddle of eager and mildly bloodthirsty faces. Everyone liked a good scrap. They were mostly Gryffindors, after all.
A red carpet unfurled from one of the flagstones, the Room’s eager contribution to their task. It spanned the length and width of a proper duelist’s piste, its color rich as aging roses against the dull stone, and its outline glowed with faint Boundary Charms. Harry stood in front of the dais, all of the Defense Club sitting in rapt eagerness at his back. Draco crossed the piste and stood to face him, with naught but the door behind him.
His was actually the better position — no chance of catching a shot from the back if a spectator got antsy; Goyle taught him that — but the optics were not unaffecting. The difference between staring down one face and forty.
There was an awkward silence as it became clear that while everyone was jolly excited about a duel, nobody knew how to start one.
Draco repressed the urge to sigh.
“Ginevra,” he called, “since you’ve instigated, you might as well do us a favor and call.”
“Wot?” Ginny scrambled up from her seat. “Can do. How’s that?”
He lifted the hand that held his wand and massaged his temple with his knuckles. “Traditionally, it’s the challenger’s second who calls. There are two parameters, means and limitations, which take the standard form—”
“How long is a challenger’s second?”
“Hilarious. For those of you with brain cells, that’s the wizard who steps in if the challenger is made incompetent. Ginevra, in this case, for me, I suppose. Almost certainly Ronald, for Potter, though ‘made incompetent’ is a rather foregone conclusion in his case.”
“Oi! Put your money where your mouth is!”
“Trying to, Potter, keep up. Ginevra, repeat: ‘To the wizard’s disarm, clavicle to coccyx. Wands only. Call.’”
“To the wizard’s disarm,” she announced, planting her hands on her hips. “Clavicle to… sorry, what?”
“Coccyx,” he sighed, fighting the urge to rub his eyes. “It’s a small bone at the base of — never mind. For our purposes, it means nothing under the belt.”
“Just say that then, posho. Anyway! Clavicle to coccyx. Wands only. Call.”
“Thank you. Now, Potter, we say our names. You first.”
Harry blinked at him as if this was an order of baffling complexity. “Harry.”
“Not — I — never mind. Draco Malfoy.”
He slid one foot back into a duelist’s stance. Harry mimicked it. Behind him, Ginny plopped down with Hermione and Ron. Hermione had her book on her lap, a pretense of disinterest, but she was watching them anyway.
He caught her gaze. She rolled her eyes at him, as in: I wash my hands of this tedious and jejune peacocking, please get it over with so we may return to discussing subjects that might interest me, Hermione Granger, a very intelligent and pretty sixteen-year-old girl.
In retrospect, he could pinpoint that as the moment he decided to win.
Draco crossed the piste in three strides and opened with a sideways lash across the throat, sending Flipendo glittering through the air like the lateral slice of a knife. Harry blocked it with a shield, startled, and then dispelled, stepped back, and ventured a skittering Expelliarmus into the afterglow. It whistled its way past Draco’s ear as he twisted his shoulder to dodge it, and kept walking.
Duels were slower than they sounded. In reality, it wasn’t a steady, breathless back-and-forth, but several short bursts of magic, followed by prowling and waiting for the other person to do something. Harry jabbed out his wand, guarding against a potential volley, and Draco pressed his weight onto his back foot, searching for an opening.
It was less interesting to watch than it was to do, and Ginny must have agreed, because she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: “Somebody do something!”
“At your service, Ginevra,” said Draco tautly, and amongst the titters of the crowd, he sprang into the next movement.
Harry staggered back from the crackling Trip Jinx, spat back a few indecisive flickers of Disarmers, then tossed out a whirling Jelly-Legs that nearly caught him with sidespin. Draco caught it with a flick of his wrist and sent it soaring at the ceiling, where it burst into a firework against the chandelier. There was laughter and applause from the crowd, like it was a carnival. As sparks fell, he snapped his wand into his riposte, a Blasting Curse that hit Harry’s shield so hard it nearly split open.
The duel grew from a short volley of spells into a more tangled, complex thing, as they gained a feel for each other’s rhythms. He noticed that Harry erred on the side of defensive magic, leaning on his back foot, slipping easily into Shields and Refractor Curses, even at the cost of an opening. He risked as little as possible. He fought like someone with a healthy wariness of being hurt, which was more common for muggle-borns — or people without ready access to magical healing, at any rate — but also meant that he spent less time on the offensive, and Draco, who liked to live on the offensive, had a lovely time beating him there. He snapped three curses around his neck and finished with a fourth that spun sideways near his abdomen, volleyed two Trip Jinxes at his feet, countered a Disarming Jinx to the face and activated a Shield Charm that bounced it back. Then he dispelled with a flick of his wrist and spun his wand in a crescent that loosed a searing chain of a Blinding Curse, which whirled after Harry in a helix. It exploded against Harry’s Banishment Charm, but his Petrificus Totalus went shrieking through the shower of sparks, and Harry dodged it with a fumbling sidestep off the mat, at which the Room gave a soft warning chime.
Draco lowered his wand, smirking at him.
“Technically, that’s the point conceded,” he said, pointing at Harry’s offending foot, “but if you’d like to continue, I’m willing to indulge you.”
“Oh, piss off,” said Harry pointedly, and threw a Stunner at him.
He did an elegant double-backstep and dropped down, bent at the knee, marveling as it glimmered over his head. Stupefy was more bite than he’d thought Harry was willing to risk, in a practice duel.
“As if,” said Harry, raising his voice over the crowd’s excited babbling and applause, “it bloody matters — where I put my foot, honestly—”
“One, it’s unsporting to complain about the rules after you’ve lost the point, as Oliver Wood ought to have taught you. Two, I don’t see you objecting to there being rules in quidditch.”
“Quidditch is a game. In a real fight, I’m not going to faff about with footwork.”
“In a real fight, I would’ve put you down on your arse while you were complaining,” said Draco, and there was a cool susurrus of amusement from the dais. Fred whistled at him. Ginny cackled.
“Yeah, right,” said Harry. “That’s the reason I’m still standing here, isn’t it, because you’re so good at it?”
Draco scoffed and slid his foot into position.
The next sixty seconds passed like hours. To his credit, Harry had been in enough fights to know where his weaknesses were, not to overextend or take steps longer than he could quickly recover from — knew, in essence, how to make as few mistakes as possible. He was faster than Draco, smaller, and more agile, which allowed him to get closer without the same concern of being caught. He never broke Draco’s guard, but he could put pressure on it, and that wasn’t nothing.
Harry was decently good at dueling, and he was good without Draco’s advantage of practice, which was impressive.
Unfortunately, Draco did have the advantage of practice. He knew how to stay on the balls of his feet and move lightly, with an awareness of where his weight and momentum; how to dance in and out of a jinx, how to engage and disengage from a movement, how to shift from defense to offense and when the time came to do both. He could see, like invisible prints in the air, the trajectories that different spells would take, and which line to choose based on where the opponent’s wand was moving — things that were not so much instinct, as some duelists described them, but rules, practiced so long and for so often that their execution felt like an original idea. He let his thoughts drift to more cerebral questions of strategy while his body did what it wanted, and found, pleasantly, that what his body wanted was to do it right. It was a waltz performed at ten paces. Dancing, with occasional violence.
He sliced a cut up the side of Harry’s guard, forcing him sideways, and in the space that cleared he could suddenly see Hermione again. She was staring, book abandoned, focused intently on the flurry of spells. Ron sat beside her, his hand resting somewhere behind her on the dais — and his arm wasn’t quite around her, but it was in her personal space, and he was saying something to her while watching Harry. She nodded, frowning, and then turned to whisper into his ear.
Harry swayed back into place, blocking them off, and Draco, hardly thinking, watched his hand move of its own accord.
“Relashio.”
Harry saw it coming from a mile, and promptly sidestepped. It whistled past him and into the crowd.
Ron toppled backward with a shout and spilled into the laps of the people behind him; namely, Lavender and Parvati. Hermione threw herself to one side and shot a furious look at Draco, who smiled guilelessly, twirling his wand through his fingers.
“Draco!”
“Hm?”
“Honestly!”
“My apologies,” he said. “That was careless of me.”
“That’s it,” shouted Ron, fumbling upright. “Enough — playing nice — Harry, budge over—”
“What are you doing?” Harry called, warily.
Ron came striding up to the piste. “I’m your second, yeah? Great. My turn. Impedimenta!”
Draco caught the spell on his wand-tip, smirking at him. Hermione was tugging her jumper straight, slightly disheveled, and looking properly indignant.
“This is a demonstration duel, remember?” she said, with faint concern. “It’s one against one. There’s no point to this if you’re going to break the rules.”
“Ah, he can take it,” Ron said chipperly. “Look at him. Proper mama’s boy, all coached up.”
“No need to be jealous, I’m sure you’ll do fine,” called Draco, flipping his wand in the air. Ron flashed an irritated look at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said sharply, closing her book. “It’s not fair. You two don’t get to beat up on him just because you want Harry to win—”
“Oi! We’re not gonna ‘beat up’ anybody—”
“They’re not going to beat up on me, thank you.”
“—and as a practical exercise, it’s not helpful for anyone to watch you three bicker like little boys!”
The matter had very little to do with Ron wanting Harry to win, and one almost suspected she knew it, considering the high flush in her face, and the quick, anxious way her eyes darted between them.
“We’re not bickering,” tried Ron. “We’re demonstrating a — a dynamic conflict encounter.”
“Just so. Dynamic. Right you are.”
She half-rose from her seat, a storm gathering in her face. “This is ridiculous. Ron, get down from there — or better yet, Harry, you step out—”
“The thing is,” said Harry, apologetically, “Hermione, the thing is — I just really want to see him get knocked on his arse.”
“Harry Potter!”
But Ginny cheered, and Hermione threw up her hands, as if to wash the whole affair from them. She started muttering mutinously to Daphne — who had very little sympathy to give her, being transfixed in delight.
Draco smirked, slightly.
The fight took two minutes. It was the longest hour of his life.
Harry and Ron were good fighters, separately. Together they were nearly a great one. No showy pieces of magic, nothing spectacular, but it was their synchrony that made them difficult. Harry and Ron knew each other’s movements down to the very twitch of a tendon; each had a preternatural sense of where the other boy was and would be, and what part of his guard would need watching when he was. It was a triumph to score a hit on them — when Ron yelped after a Stinging Jinx to the arm, or Harry froze in a short-lived Petrificus that Ron snapped out with Finite a moment later. The pair of them moved like they were boats on a tide, the step and the counterstep, spells leaping from their wands like luminous eels.
He thought briefly of Mad-Eye Moody and Barty Crouch, dueling Sibelius Nott in the headmaster’s office. It gave him an idea.
He Summoned a bench from the side of the room — it came flying, skittering loudly against the stone, and students gasped — and threw it at them.
It screeched down the piste and nearly bowled them over. Harry knocked it away with a Banishment Charm, stopping it before it could flatten anyone on the dais, but Ron just vaulted it and lunged. Draco ducked and darted under his arm, backhanding him a curse that Ron dodged. Remembered the way he’d leaned down to speak in Hermione’s ear, at the Hog’s Head, his arm getting personally acquainted with Hermione’s space, his mouth almost intimate with her ear, and there was something sharp and hot in his stomach — and the next curse was a nasty corkscrew of yellow, exploding against the stones.
Ron grunted in surprise and threw an elbow that caught Draco in the side. He tripped and caught himself, his jaw clamping, accidentally snapping his incisors together around his tongue.
Pain welled, and a moment later, so did blood. He wiped his mouth delicately on his sleeve, leaving a rose-bright smear of blood. He checked it and grimaced. Someone whimpered.
“That’s enough,” said Hermione sharply, making to stand, but Ginny hauled her down. “Back off! Now! That’s enough! He’s bleeding—”
“I’m fine,” he snapped, wrenching up his sleeve. A fine sheen of sweat lay on his neck; his collar felt tight. Uniforms were not proper duelist’s wear. Absently, he wrenched out his tie knot and ripped it off, tossing the scrap of red silk aside. Cool air grazed his throat when he opened his collar. He probably looked ridiculous, but he was too preoccupied being in a snit to care.
There were a few giggles, most of them in a decidedly high register. Katie gave a piercing whistle. Since he knew for a fact that Katie saw most of them shirtless at quidditch practices, this meant it was a calculated move to embarrass him. He sent her a glower and turned back around.
“Well?” he said irritably. “Are you going to make me wait?”
Ron’s forehand jinx nearly caught him on the shoulder, and drove him all but headfirst into Expelliarmus. He went down to a knee and lashed a Trip Jinx for his heels, rolled back upright and whipped a curse over his shoulder. A shout from Ron told him he’d bought himself a second and he used it to lunge, snapping two jinxes to keep Harry preoccupied while he whirled back to catch Ron’s next on a Shield, and gradually he caught sight of it — or feel of it, rather, the rhythm of the duel, which had grown faster but was still the same. There was such a thing as a dance for three, after all.
And there was blood on his teeth and sweat on his neck and hair in his eyes, but for a moment he had them both at bay, nipping at him fruitlessly, unable to touch him, unable to get close enough to land a hit, sprinting here and there just to try and get a taste of him, and it felt good. It felt good, to be good at it. It was good to be powerful.
Applause met the occasional explosion of colliding magic, gasps for the neat dodge, a scream whenever someone did something daring — and Harry was more daring with Ron there, more confident, more eager to lunge and open his sides and try trickier spells. He feinted and caught Draco with an underhand he wasn’t expecting, and Ron went running in for the finish on his back, and he could block one but his wand couldn’t point in two directions at once, so he cut sideways and swung wide in a lash of a Stunner that hit neither, but gave him time to arrange his limbs for what was coming — the Disarming Charm that clipped his wrist, tossing his wand high and free, and then the Trip Jinx that snared his left ankle, sending him down on his side, hard, to the floor.
“DISARMED!” Ginny hollered. “Done! Called! Geroff him, gits!”
Ron leaned over with a rueful grin and extended his hand. Draco grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet, grimacing.
He rolled to his feet. Blood welled at his lip and he scrubbed it off again, irritated by the mess more than anything, because the adrenaline washed out the pain. He made to leave the piste, but his way was blocked: people were swarming down from the dais, wildly applauding Harry.
Seamus snatched up Draco’s hand and hoisted it over his head.
“TWO AT ONCE!” he howled. “THE MADMAN!”
And he realized they were cheering, not just for Harry — who had, in fact, won — but for all of them. He blinked and shook off Seamus, unsettled, as the roar rose to dwarf everything, even the residual shudder of his heartbeat in his ears. It was nice, though, the cheering. The starry-eyed stares, which seemed to greet him from every corner of the room, as if he’d done something remarkable, instead of merely keeled over and lost a duel. No one seemed dismayed by the fact that he’d failed. It was, if anything, a warmer welcome than he could have expected if he’d won.
He nodded, jerky and awkward, and stepped away. Some of them followed him, babbling about this-or-that maneuver, which was flattering but frankly disinteresting; he wanted his tie back.
It had fallen near the dais, with his bag, near Hermione. She was still seated. She’d failed to rise, applaud, or indeed acknowledge that the bout was over. Not particularly surprising, since she obviously didn’t approve. He bent to pick up his bag and caught her looking at him.
Heat seared him. A pink luster shone on her face, like she’d come from a steam bath, and her eyes were distant, lidded, vaguely fogged. Her mouth was parted and it made it look intensely, painfully lovely, and she didn’t stir even when he looked at her. Instead she continued to regard him with a sort of shameless and glassy appraisal, the way one considered a painting or a sculpture, which made his whole body feel warm and vaguely objectified.
There was a pulse of want. He forgot where he was and what he was doing, and he almost stumbled. There was a tightness all over his body, like his skin was too small.
And what else was he possibly supposed to feel, when she was looking like that. She looked like she wanted to— she looked like he didn’t even know the names for everything she wanted to do.
He stepped forward and picked up his bag. Slung it over his shoulder, straightened up, and looked down at her with his hands in his pockets. At the risk of stating the obvious, it was not a friendly type of expression.
Wasn’t that an idea.
A thin and sparkling avenue of possibility opened up in the back of his head.
He jerked his head at the door. “Meeting’s over,” he said.
“I know,” she said at once, irritated. She shouldered her bag and shoved past him. “Right. Good job.”
“Ta,” he said mildly, and he wasn’t even put out at her tone; there was a sort of giddy pinwheel happening somewhere in his chest, and he wasn’t inclined to let much of anything spoil it. She pushed through the crowd, ignoring several procedural questions from members who wanted her advice, which was so unlike her that it made him laugh.
That was — that was wonderful. That was excellent. That was a development of incredible, unsurpassed quality, and it was to be celebrated. It would be celebrated. Someone should get fireworks. He deserved them. He was going to shake Harry’s hand. He was going to shake Ron’s hand, too, they were opponents, it was procedure. He could shake everyone’s hand in the room, at that, why not, they’d worked hard, he was proud of them. He was a munificent being of unearthly beauty and talent, and he was in a wonderful fucking mood.
He didn’t notice how the meeting ended, only at once, it had. Daphne was chattering about some flaw she’d hammered out in her Disarming Charm, and Colin bobbing around hollering about how sodding cool it had all been. Neville and Luna were having a pleasant conversation about a species of plant that assuredly did not exist, and the twins had gone off to hide dungbombs in a broom closet for Filch. Hermione’s spine was as straight as an iron bar — which Harry and Ron took for disapproval, and Ron twice apologized to her, though she pretended not to hear him.
The sunlight was fading from the windows, the sky a dusty blue, a cool draft starting to whisper through the atrium. Footsteps clicked distantly on the stone, and the portraits murmured and waved hello as evening settled in. The Ravenclaws drifted off to their own common room, Cho with a firm parting kiss to Harry’s flame-bright cheek; the Hufflepuffs, led by a cheerful Cedric, pattered off down the stairs.
As he was waving off the last of them, Harry gasped and dropped to his knees. The remaining Gryffindors lurched to catch him.
“Potter?”
“Harry!”
“Get him up, help him, go on—”
Leaning on a combination of Ginny, Ron, and Daphne, they wrestled him back to his feet, though he still leaned heavily on Ron’s shoulder. His hand was glued to his forehead, his face folded in pain.
“What is it? Talk to us, mate.”
“Scar,” he gritted out. “It’s bad.”
“Does this happen often?” said Ginny helplessly. “Like, d’you have a potion that helps, or…?”
“No,” said Harry weakly, “usually goes away on — on its own — oh, shit.”
He buckled again, breathing fast through his teeth, and then shook his head violently.
“It feels — wrong,” he gasped. “It feels… like… angry. There’s this… image? I can see a— a house— I know how it sounds, but— it’s real. It feels real. It’s a house, it’s got three towers, and it’s — it’s ruined, though, it’s falling apart— someone’s emptied it out— it hurts—”
“Should we go to the Hospital Wing?” murmured Daphne, ducking down to check his temperature. “You’re very warm.”
“It’ll wear off.”
“I’m more concerned about what happens before it does, my dear.”
“I don’t want the Hospital Wing.”
The group shifted back, clearing a small ring of space. Then Harry yelped and keeled over again, and Ron corrected: “Yep, nope, Hospital Wing, here we go,” and with one of Harry’s arms slung over his shoulder, he began to drag him out of the Room of Requirement. Harry made sounds of protest, but being incapable of higher motor function, the decision was made for him by the man he was using as a makeshift spine. Daphne hurried up to balance him out on the other arm.
“Someone get his things,” she called, “he dropped his wand—”
“We’ll get them!” said Hermione briskly. “Take him ahead! We’ll meet you there.”
She fell back behind the group, which were shepherding Harry up to the Hospital Wing in a potential too-many-cooks situation. Harry, for his part, seemed indignant but also in need of helping, and was grumbling with the irritated note of a man who believed his health to be much less dire than it was. Draco decided to let those with better bedside manners deal with a patient in such a state, let the door slide shut behind them.
Hermione slowly bent to lift Harry’s bag, and tucked his wand safely inside it. She went about packing his things with an absent, thoughtless care, smoothing out the pages of his books, wrapping his parchment scrolls tightly, and folding his seeker’s gloves into thirds before sliding them into their own compartment. It was with a fond, filial smile that she lifted his pocket snitch, and cocked it to the light, before tucking it into the bottom of the satchel and fastening its snap.
Draco leaned against the door, watching her.
“Sickle for your thoughts.”
Hermione blinked, and shook herself.
“A house with three towers… That’s very specific.”
“It could be a fever dream.”
“Or Dumbledore could be right. And that could have been — a vision of something else.”
“You think the Dark Lord was inspecting real estate?”
She exhaled in mild amusement, and glanced at him, her eyes soft and almost yellow in the sheer evening light. It drew something in his chest tight together, like lacing the strings of a corset, a pleasant pressure.
“Alright there?” he said evenly, and she twitched. Dropped her hand from her mouth.
“Fine. I’m fine. Frankly, I should be the one asking you. After that production.”
“Worried, Granger?”
“Terrified. If you’d won, I’d never hear the end of it.”
She shouldered Harry’s bag and approached the door, where he leaned casually.
“That fight was far more involved than it needed to be.”
“I thought you wanted me to be impressive.”
“That wasn’t license to be reckless.”
“Were you impressed?”
“By recklessness? No. It takes rather more than that to impress me, thanks.”
A bald lie. “Such as?”
“Such as good judgment!”
“Good judgment stirs the blood, does it?”
“Yes. And prudence,” she said, voice stilted. “Wisdom. Common sense.”
“That’s what you like?”
“Maybe it is,” she said, finally. She folded her arms and lifted her chin, cocking her head up with an undeniable edge of haughtiness. She was astonishingly, vexingly pretty. “So what? They’re excellent qualities in a person.”
“Inarguably. But one feels rather sorry for him.”
“Who?”
“The fellow you’d like.”
“I don’t… follow.”
He reached out and straightened her prefect’s badge. She let out a sharp breath.
“Well, he wouldn’t get to do that,” he said, “for example.”
When she replied, it was stilted and much-belated.
“Harry is in the Hospital Wing,” she said. “This isn’t any kind of time — to be doing this.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
She shouldered past him, clutching Harry’s bag.
“Granger,” he repeated, raising his voice, “what’s ‘this’?”
But Hermione had already left. He watched the door swing behind her, and the corner of his mouth twisted into a small, slow smirk.
-A very merry Taylor Swiftmas to all who celebrate.
-This chapter went through a lot of alternate titles before settling. Candidates included “St. Potter’s College for Juvenile Delinquency,” “SOC101: Introduction to Peacocking,” and “Mating Rituals of the Common Pureblood”, although alas, I did decide ultimately that I should Try To Be Serious. (As Draco might say: not my forte.)
-Draco’s understanding of his parents’ courtship is what you get when your parents were an era-defining power couple that you, as a practicing Victorian, have carefully declined to think about as people with romantic feelings, or indeed passions of any kind not pertaining to French wines and rare broomsticks.
-Branching off a conversation in this chapter, it’s a point of interest to me why (canon) Harry assumed he’d make prefect in fifth year. Specifically, he says he “didn’t think about it” beforehand, but if he had, then he would have assumed it would be him (which — dude, literally no one has broken more rules than you, but okay.) His reasons for it are pretty contrived, too; he references fighting the basilisk by himself, without Ron, for instance, which is obviously impressive, but also has zero to do with being a prefect.
-And TBC, it’s a totally natural thing for a 15 y/o boy to see his friend get a Shiny and think “why not me tho :/”, so this isn’t trying to be like a CinemaSins ding! moment, I just find it interesting. Harry’s competitive streak always surprises me for some reason. Still James’s son, as it were.
-So many incredible, jaw-dropping comments on the last chapter: I want to present each of you with a draught of Felix Felicis and a very, very good cup of coffee for breakfast. Or tea, or champagne, or whatever you like your mornings to start with. Maybe all three!
-Next chapter goes up on Friday! Title: “Occlumency.” Or, alternately: Draco Malfoy and the Year of A Million God Damn Extracurricular Activities.
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