Chapter 75: The Crimes of Albus Dumbledore
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
“I feel so stupid.”
They were alone in the Hospital Wing. Astoria had been transported to St. Mungo’s around midnight, which was when her vitals returned to normal, and her parents went with her. Daphne had stayed.
Daphne curled at the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, and with her chin perched on her kneecaps she looked very young. She wore a cornflower blue dressing-gown, and when she dipped her chin, her hair fell over the scarred half of her face.
A house-elf had brought her some tea, which lay cooling on a tray, along with a plate of shortbread and lemon cakes. Draco drank from his cup and listened to the clock tower give a single, mournful toll.
“I started giving transfusions when I was seven. Tori was three. It was obvious to everyone very early that her condition was worse than mine. She was extremely frail. Walking was difficult for her. She would get these muscle spasms that made her legs lock up. We both did, but mine were less frequent. Less severe. I could get around with a cane, but before the chair, she couldn’t get up the stairs.
“I hated giving blood. I hated needles — I still hate needles — and it meant I spent even more time in bed. It wasn’t fair. I mean, why me?” she said bitterly. She lifted her head. “Why do I have to stick around the Hall in the summers, when Millie’s in Greece, and Blaise is in Rome, and you’ve got Pans and Teddy in France? Why couldn’t I be free like the rest of you?”
She ducked her head low again, pressing her nose between her knees. “I was a fool.”
“You were seven years old.”
“Thirteen,” she spat. “A fool at seven and a fool at thirteen, and as foolish at sixteen as ever. I spent my whole life wanting to be free of her, and then I got what I wanted, and it ruined my life. Isn’t that just Daphne for you! She wants to be well again? Try a werewolf bite! She wants a date to the ball? Now Hermione loathes you! Sick of Daddy’s fussing? He can’t bear to look at her. Wants to be rid of her sister? Very good, Daphne, anything for you: she’ll learn to hate you, and die. And maybe that’ll finally teach you not to be so selfish all the time, you, you vain, stupid, spoiled little bitch—”
“Stop it.”
Daphne stopped.
He conjured a handkerchief for her. She buried her face in it.
“Hermione doesn’t loathe you,” he said. “For one thing.”
“She’d be right to. I’m hateful.”
“You’re not hateful.”
“I’m stupid.”
“Less so than most.”
“I wish I was clever,” she cried. “Then I wouldn’t mess everything up. I don’t know why I always mess everything up.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” he said tiredly. “Brilliance is no guarantee of character. Take me, for instance.”
It seemed to clear the fog of misery. Daphne lifted her head, daubing her eyes, and snorted.
“You’re not a bad person, you know,” she said. “You’re just a very silly, very sad little boy.”
“A thief knows a thief.”
Her smile grew. “Don’t we just?”
Thunder rolled. The frosted windows blazed white and then dimmed again.
“I would like you to promise me something,” she said distantly.
“Tell me what it is.”
“Promise first.”
“No.”
She smiled thinly. “Spoilsport. Fine. If I become a monster—”
“Pomfrey said you didn’t have lycanthropy.”
“That was before my readings went up.”
“Those are just readings. You’re still missing the principal symptom.” His voice was edged.
“The one where I turn into a monster?” she said, frowning into her cup. “Yes. But I don’t suppose it will be long, the way things are going.”
“It’s been almost two years since your bite. If something were going to happen, it would have happened by now.”
“Transformations don’t always start immediately,” she said, with the same distant, philosophical affect. “It happens around puberty, some say. For girls, in particular, it’s later. Some say. Anyway, if I do transform, I have to — to put my trust in someone. And trusting you was the first smart thing I ever did.”
He set down his cup with a sharp noise.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “The Defense textbook says that silver works well enough. I looked it up, you know. You’re not the only one who can read ahead.”
“Silver kills werewolves. It doesn’t cure them.”
She shrugged. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “If you can find another way, that would be nice, but I’m trying to be realistic.”
He shoved his chair away and stood, repulsed. “No one is going to kill you. Especially not me. And I resent you for asking.”
Daphne bent her head and hid her face behind her knees.
“I always knew I wouldn’t live very long,” she said. “Ever since the diagnosis. Aunt Cilla died at twenty-one; Aunt Cassie was gone by twenty-four. Grandmama made it all the way to thirty-five. So I never thought I was going to have a career or see the world or anything. And I’ve already lived loads more in sixteen years than some of them did in thirty. If you look at it one way, it’s not a great loss.”
“Fuck’s sake. Greengrass. Stop.”
She tried, haltingly, to smile.
“I just don’t want to hurt anybody,” she said, as her voice dwindled on the threshold of tears. “I never wanted to hurt anybody. I wanted people to like me.”
“They do.”
“They won’t if I’m a monster.”
“You’d be surprised what people can overlook.”
She frowned up at him.
“You’re not going to die,” he said curtly. “What you will do is pull yourself together. If you don’t want to hurt anyone, then don’t. Take measures. Learn how to manage it. Solve the problem. Find a way out.”
“What if I can’t?” she said, trembling. She might cry. “I’m not strong. And I’m not clever. I can’t do the things you can.”
“Then get others to do them. You were willing enough to ask for help in dying; I don’t know why you think you can’t ask for help to live.”
She wrung his handkerchief fretfully. “Do you think I ought to?” she said. “Is there any point in it? I don’t want to get my hopes up for something, and be looking forward to things, and all that, if I’m just going to… I mean, can it be fixed? Really? And do you think that it’d be worth it to… I mean, can you even say for sure there’s a life for me out there, if I do make it? Because I don’t know that you can.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. The black garnet of his ring seemed lightless against the blue silk.
“I’m Lord Malfoy,” he said. “I can do anything I want.”
She smiled at him wistfully. She put her hand over his on her shoulder and rubbed it with a fond, fraternal touch.
“Then here’s to silly and sad little pureblood boys,” she said. “And the pureblood girls who never learn.”
By the time he left the Hospital Wing, blue light suffused the frost-filmed windows. Daphne stayed behind, claiming she wanted Pomfrey’s opinion on a brewing headache; he suspected the remedy she desired was actually some time alone, but he gave it to her.
Distraction shrank the distance between the Hospital Wing and Gryffindor Tower into nothing. His brain ached, and the intensity of the previous evening asserted itself with itinerant performances of all scenes — his mother, his mother’s memory, Astoria’s transfusion — such that he lacked the space to consider any one at length.
The common room was still and quiet as the corridor, but at the creak of the door, there was movement by the fireplace. Hermione raised her head over the sofa’s back, scrubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Granger?”
She froze. Then she scrambled upright. He moved quickly to meet her, roused to fear by the look on her face.
“Merlin, what are you doing awake? It’s nearly four—”
Hermione grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Her expression was so furious he was surprised it didn’t burst into flames at the touch of her hand.
She wrenched him around and reached up and — his brain blanked — hauled him into a kiss.
It was a fast, angry kiss. Her mouth slanted hot and bruising on his, her teeth needling his lip. Her tongue slipped past his. He stumbled and kissed her back without finesse, worry warring against desire. She made a sharp sound and yanked his hair.
It was a cross between a punishment and a fascinating incentive to keep her angry at him all the time.
She tore back and gave him a hungry once-over, seeking fretfully anything that might be wrong with him. Her ensuing relief survived for a gratifying few seconds before irritation erupted in its place. “You went missing,” she snapped. “That’s the occasion. You swanned off to Dumbledore’s office, alone, after a coded message that wasn’t even signed, and you didn’t come back to dinner and you didn’t come back to the common room. Oh! And then! Theodore Nott shows up and breaks the door down, screaming his head off for Daphne, and she goes running, and the rest of us have the full night wondering when someone’s going to let us in on what the hell is going on in this castle — which of course no one does — so now I’m up waiting for you—”
She broke off and swiped the back of her eyes. He looked at her in amazement.
“Sorry,” she said, in a normal voice. “I’m under a lot of stress. And — if something happened to you — right after we — it’d be the last straw. You know. I can’t handle, I wouldn’t — I couldn’t take it. So that’s why. I wouldn’t react this way, normally. Obviously.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“This is all very embarrassing.”
“Look at me. I’m famously hard to kill.”
“It’s fine,” she said tightly. “I overreacted. It’s fine.”
Something hot and sharp ignited in the back of his throat.
“My mother and I had a long conversation,” he said. “Then I went to the Hospital Wing. Then I saw Greengrass. I’ll tell you what happened, but you can’t tell anyone. And the ‘anyone’ in that sentence is ironclad.”
Curiosity sliced through the morass of misery and embarrassment on her face.
He drew her over to the sofa, and she sat warily with her legs balanced across his lap.
When he had finished explaining, the birds had begun trilling at the window, and the fire was almost dead. Hermione pressed her hand to her mouth, brow knit.
“If she transforms,” she said, “she’ll need potion. I don’t know where—”
“Snape can brew Wolfsbane. I can ask him. If Dumbledore hasn’t already.”
“Is it difficult?”
“Well, if you could get it off the shelf, you’d think he would have.”
“No, I’m sure, but I mean… well, that’s a thought for down the road. She still might not transform.”
“That’s my hope.”
She leaned forward, folding her arms over her knees. “How are her parents reacting?”
He raked a hand through his hair, uncomfortable. “They didn’t acknowledge her.”
“They didn’t talk to her?”
“Her mother might’ve said a few words before they left. I don’t know. They’ve kept her at Hogwarts and haven’t told her anything, which suggests they’re trying to keep up appearances. Frankly, I’m less worried about them than I am about Warrington.”
“God, he’s everywhere. What’s his problem?”
“As I understand it, the new tests legally qualify her as a lycanthrope. Even latent ones are supposed to register with the Ministry.”
“And what would that entail?”
He rubbed his eyes. “She couldn’t go to school,” he said, grimacing. “That’s the main thing. Registered werewolves are highly regulated. They’re not allowed to get within ten kilometers of any school, or place where children live—”
“She is a child!”
“—or wizarding settlement — I’m only telling you. It’s why most of them end up living out in the wild. With other werewolves, if anyone.”
“That’s — that’s horrendous. But she’s a pureblood. And wealthy. Doesn’t that make a difference?”
“Not for Warrington,” he said. “In his mind, she’s already dead.”
“Christ, that’s disgusting.”
He shrugged: And so it is.
“And is that what they all think?” she said coldly. “Theodore and Pansy?”
“Well, there’s an interesting question. If I had to say a word for Nott and Parkinson — and to be clear, I preferably wouldn’t — I would say their devotion to Daphne, as a person, is genuine, and it runs deep. I would also say their devotion to any ideology whatsoever is strategic and, to the extent it exists, shallow. I venture they would accept her as an exception to the rule. When Warrington called her an animal, Nott swung on him.”
“On Cassius?” she repeated incredulously, sitting up a little. “I thought they were allies.”
“Alliances have limits. Maybe she’s one of them.”
“But that’s incredibly foolish,” she said flatly. “Cassius is Theo’s best connection in the Ministry. And his arrival prompted Theo to start doing… whatever it is he’s doing with Myrtle.”
“You still think they’re connected? The castle walls aren’t as thick as Warrington’s skull.”
“He’s cruel, not stupid,” she replied evenly. “And more importantly, he’s an adult. That means he’s capable of leaving the castle.”
It took him only a moment to understand what she meant. “Making him the only way to get information out of the castle that doesn’t require it to pass Umbridge’s desk.”
“Exactly. But to what end, I’m still not sure.”
Abruptly, she leaned over and pressed her head into his shoulder. He shifted to accommodate her, and she pressed tightly into his lap, her head set under the arch of his chin. He wrapped his arm around her waist and wondered how anyone so small could produce so much heat. It was like having a furnace pressed over his navel.
He could feel the twitch of her heartbeat against his palm on her back. When he noticed it, his heart slowed to match it.
Embers snapped. The light was so low that only a faint warm glow from the grate spared them from darkness.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, as if she were confessing a humiliating secret.
“No one does.”
“But something will, won’t it? Something has to. We keep saying there’s going to be a war, but what does that mean? Attacks in the papers? Things happening in the Wizengamot? There haven’t been battles. We don’t know how large the enemy is, or how many of them are out there. I used to think if someone threatened my friends, I’d find a way to fight it. But now there is, and I’m — what am I doing? Hosting study groups. Prefect patrols. Trying to pass my exams.”
“We’re students. That’s what we should be doing.”
“It’s what we should have been doing,” she said, brittle. “In a world that doesn’t exist, and maybe never could. Draco, I want to do something that matters. When the war comes, I want to know I didn’t waste the time I had left pretending it never would.”
Instinctively, he wanted to ask why it would be such a waste to pretend. If everything had to end, it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to remember what it felt like to be free.
“Peace in our time is not your personal burden to bear.”
She drew back and frowned at him. “Yes, it is,” she said. “It’s mine as much as anyone else’s.”
“Merlin’s fucking sake.”
“It is! We’re not ignorant, we have knowledge, we have skills—”
“We’re not yet seventeen.”
“Lily Potter was my age when she joined the Order of the Phoenix.”
“Lily Potter is dead.” His throat was tight. “This isn’t dragons and mermaids. It isn’t an adventure. When wizards go to war, it’s a killing field.”
“All wars are a killing field. And I never said it was an adventure.” Hermione lifted her chin, head high. “And Lily Potter killed Lord Voldemort.”
Draco repressed a surge of revulsion. He put the back of his hand to his mouth, quelling bile.
White masks leering through the hedge and mist. Green light. A boy’s body on the floor.
“Don’t,” he snapped.
“It’s a fact,” she said stubbornly. “I didn’t mean any—”
“Granger, don’t say that to me,” he said quietly. “We both know damn well what you mean by it.”
Hermione swallowed, caught out, and turned her head to regard the fireplace. She did not acknowledge that she had tried to lie to him, and he did not further the point. Even with her face to the flames, the circles beneath her eyes were deep, and abiding.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said.
“Something that will convince me you value your life as much as I do.” He ran his hand down her wrist and turned her bandaged hand. “You haven’t used the phoenix tears.”
“I’m saving them. And I do value my life, Draco, I just happen to value other things more—”
“I know it well. That’s my problem.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said, frowning at him. “You care about freedom. And fairness. And justice, you wouldn’t still be here if you didn’t.”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“With me,” she said incredulously. She gestured between them, furiously, as if trying to illustrate a thick, heavy cord connecting them. “Together. Partners. Whatever we are. In every sense, and in every way there is. You wouldn’t be with me if you didn’t believe it.”
“You think I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t on the side of the angels?” His tone bordered on withering.
She shot him an equally withering look. “No. But you can’t pretend you don’t know where the angels are, you’ve been standing with them too long. A sneer and a one-liner don’t change that. They might work with other people. They certainly don’t with me.”
“If you amassed the world’s justice,” he said, “and its fairness, and its freedom, and you set them on a scale against you — judged according to the bearing they have on my mind, the command they have of my choices—”
“Oh, don’t even—”
“It would not move.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe that I would win, and that’s a good thing,” she said snappishly, folding her arms. One could always trust her to get peeved at a compliment. “You don’t have to take this line. You can care for me and still admit you’re a good person. I’m not going to be irritated—”
“I did not say it would not win; I said it would not move. The scale would break before it lifted you.”
“Why won’t you admit you’re on our side?” she demanded. “I know you’re with Harry. Everyone in Gryffindor knows you’re with Harry. Nobody who knows you thinks for one moment you’d abandon him.”
“Maybe I care for him. Did you think of that? Maybe I think the world has dealt him enough suffering. Maybe I would like to see the next chapter of his inexcusably sad life redeemed, however briefly, by some measure of safety and happiness.”
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “that’s the war. It’s about safety and happiness. For Harry, and for everyone. If you’re for that, you’re on the side of the angels. It’s really that simple.”
“I’m not on your side. I’m with you.”
“That’s the same thing, Draco.”
Are you sure? he wanted to say, but he didn’t want her to look at him the way she would if he did. He glowered at the coals.
“It’s never ‘for everyone,’” he said. “That’s why it’s not simple.”
Hermione drew breath to reply — assuredly something cutting and intelligent that would have made him feel even more wretched — and the stairs creaked. She whipped around as Draco turned his head, and they both watched Ron emerge from the boys’ staircase. At the sight of them perched closely on the sofa, Ron’s mouth gave a sour twist, and his eyes narrowed.
“I heard you from the bathroom,” he said stiffly. “If you’re having a lovers’ spat, could you save it for the morning? Rest of us are trying to sleep.”
Hermione bridled. “Cast Muffliato,” she said sharply. “Or do something. You’re a perfectly capable fifth-year wizard, and it isn’t our fault you forget it.”
Ron scowled and dropped his head. Draco remained silent, drumming his fingers on the back of the sofa, and waited to see what he would do.
“I heard you talking about the war,” muttered Ron.
Draco stiffened. He was tempted to say: And since? But he did not want to give Ron the satisfaction of riling him.
“How much did you hear?” said Hermione warily.
“‘Peace in our time.’ And something about fighting.” He raised his chin. “You two planning something, then?”
“No,” she replied. “We’re talking about how useless I feel, actually.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
“Excuse me? What does that mean?”
“I dunno,” he said aggressively. “I come out and you two are cozied up together, talking about Harry and war—”
“That was a private conversation! It wasn’t meant for you!”
Draco sighed. “Don’t be dramatic, Ronald.”
“I’m not being dramatic,” Ron exclaimed. “You know what? Fine! You two can go off and snog each other’s brains out, fine! None of my sodding business. Fine. But if you start making war plans without the rest of us—”
“We’re not making ‘war plans’ without you!” She shot up off the couch as if scalded, and her departure left Draco feeling cold. “What possible reason could you even have for that? The fact we’re having a conversation without you in it?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, Mione. Good job. O for listening.”
“Then tell me what you are saying, Ron, because you’ve just come have a go at me for the capital sin of talking in private—”
“Sorry! I guess the rest of us should just leave you and your boyfriend alone, yeah? Stop interfering?”
“If you’re going to be horrible, then yes,” she shouted. Her hair swung free around her shoulders with the force of her gesture, broad and crackling with the static of her anger. “Leave me and Draco alone, why don’t you? That’s what you want, isn’t it? You picked a fight and you got one, and now you get to run off and sulk and tell yourself it’s my fault you’re feeling shitty. So go on! Save us some time! Make yourself someone else’s problem!”
Draco glanced at her sharply, then at Ron, keeping his expression still. His face was warm.
“You don’t mean that,” Ron said faintly. “You’re just — cross at me. S’all. Mione, you don’t mean it.”
“Oh, go cry to Harry,” she snapped.
She whirled around and sat down hard on the couch, every muscle rigid. Ron made a furious noise and fled up the stairs, his feet pounding on the steps.
Draco tipped his head back, inhaled, and exhaled for a long time.
“Don’t say it,” Hermione said thickly. When he looked over, she had her head in her hands, and she was muttering through her fingers. “I know I was horrible. I am horrible. Just — please don’t say anything for a little bit.”
“Granger—”
“Don’t,” she gasped. “Please don’t say anything. If you do, I’m going to scream.”
Wordlessly, he reached for her. With a gasp, she clambered into his arms, and she flung her head into the cradle of his neck and shoulder. Her arms wound tight around his neck. She made a long, thin sound of despair.
“You’re not horrible,” he murmured. He rested his chin over her head, and felt her shiver. “It was a row. You and I have had them. So has Ronald. It isn’t the first.”
“I’m getting worse,” she whispered. She sounded afraid. “I’m getting meaner. I’m less patient with him. With Harry. Draco, it’s getting harder. I’m getting angrier, and I can feel myself getting worse.”
“You’re still yourself. You’re different, not worse.” He ran his hands through her hair, freeing the sharp, sweet scent of citrus. “That’s life. You can’t be the same person you were at eleven. Though candidly, you were none too patient then, either.”
She laughed wetly into his chest. “Was I horrible then, too?”
“Wickedly.”
“Do you promise?”
“You were an impatient, thankless, horrible creature from the day we met,” he said, “and if you ever improved, I would never forgive you.”
He drew her face back, holding her chin cupped in her hands. She leaned up and kissed him, her lips grazing his chastely, soft and wet. He kissed her back, gently, and settled her back to his chest. He pressed his nose into her crown, and she gave another little shiver. The wind began to howl.
The term crawled on. Fleeting gasps of daylight slipped through the frosted windows, and shadows turned rounds on the ancient stones. Evenings blurred into each other. The nights were so long that sometimes they could spend an afternoon in the dungeons and emerge to perfect darkness at the windows. Quidditch practices took place with the floodlights on, regardless of the hour — for the other three Houses, who had resumed play for the Cup in a sequence of slow, ill-attended matches, since attendance was capped.
Daphne returned to Gryffindor Tower with a smile and an alibi. She had been called to comfort her sister in a medical emergency, she said, and the others accepted the explanation as reasonable, which it was. Astoria’s chair made the revelation of her infirmity less than shocking for most, and Daphne played to it by interpolating threads of truth: the poor dear, she’d been sick her whole life; grew up alone in a big house with no one but Daphne and her cats for company; and who but her big sister could soothe her in a moment of pain and fear?
She did not breathe the word ‘lycanthropy,’ and Draco respected her wishes by striking it from his vocabulary also. He steered the conversation away from her health, where possible; he silently removed werewolves from Defense Club’s March curriculum. Feigning normalcy seemed to be the only thing to be done for Daphne, and so he did it, persistently and well.
She lied blithely and well about it, which surprised Draco, for some reason. He never doubted that she could, but it was disconcerting to realize that if he hadn’t known the truth he would not, most likely, have been able to tell the difference.
A shrinking set of objects in his life did not dispirit him to remember upon waking. There were his studies, which he had always enjoyed, and now approached the reaping of his efforts in; there were his books, his music, the headphones and cassettes he hid beneath a secret compartment in his bedside drawer; there were the empty corridors on prefect patrols, peaceful and dark, as if nothing had changed since first year; and there was Hermione.
Hermione, scowling and scheming and fishing quills out of his pockets whenever she needed one. Hermione, clever and cunning and banging his door at six in the morning to go over notes. Hermione, crabby and stubborn and refusing to go to bed, dozing on his shoulder in the common-room.
Hermione whom he could touch, with her dark eyes and her hard scowl and the way she steered him around by the robes or the wrist when she wanted something, and he let her, because it pleased him that she wanted to.
For when the common room emptied, as it did late at the night, he could do things he couldn’t in public. He could reach for her hand and tug it pointedly, until she understood and rolled her eyes and climbed over to sit nearer, and sometimes he could turn — quash the instinctive feeling of unreality — and draw her face up for a kiss. And she would make a fussy little noise, feigning surprise, as if to say: How shocking that I, Hermione Granger, have been kissed by a boy I have been staring at like some sort of edible object for the past hour. The unmitigated gall of men!
And then she would break off and scold him for distracting her. Then she would usually kiss him again. He soon gave up on trying to understand her modes of seduction, and was happier for it.
There was a certain kind of pleasure in keeping a secret.
It still seemed indecent to make displays. There wasn’t a reason it should be; both of them understood, insofar as one ever could, what was going on, or beginning to be going on; but after so many years of habituation in one mode of being with each other and others, their inertia prevented any sudden changes. She sat at an appreciable distance when the four of them were together, and he kept his hands to himself. He touched her back when she climbed a stair ahead of him, and she leaned on his shoulder when she needed to remove a stone in her shoe, but these things they had done before, and if anyone noticed them, they had the good sense not to remark on the relationship of the Gryffindor prefects, which after all had always lain well outside the parameters of common understanding.
It was unclear to what extent they succeeded in discretion, since Ron still made a point of removing himself whenever Harry wasn’t with them. Moreover, he seemed determined never to be left with Hermione or Draco individually. He stuck doggedly to Harry’s side through the last weeks of term, leaving the library when he did, taking meals when he did, and following him to bed at night.
“I don’t like the idea of him alone,” he said. “Not now. That’s all.”
“You’re right, but you don’t have to do it all yourself,” said Hermione. “Draco and I could—”
“No. I’ve got him,” he said brusquely, shouldering his bag to leave them.
These and other changes seemed to mark a shift in Ron’s relationship with Hermione. He had stopped asking her for help with his homework, and rebuffed her inquiry about his O.W.L. study plan. He did not invite her to play wizard’s chess, or Snap, or any other game the Weasley family might take up on a cold evening. When he came upon her reading in the common room, he did not strike up a conversation about the book, but went off to find Harry, or — more startling still — simply sat down with his own books, and worked.
He was not rude to her, or to Draco, for that matter; if anything, he was unusually civil. He spoke to them with brittle but unchipped politeness, as if he did not quite know who they were, or how to be with him, but he was still trying to treat them well.
It was a reversion, of sorts, to a mean that had never existed — to a state of disknowledge they had never assumed with each other, because even if they had not always liked each other, they had never been strangers. His first hours in Hogwarts Castle had been punctuated by a fight with Ron Weasley. Most of the rest of them had been engaged in a long, emotionally complicated friendship. They had never been strangers, and it made the castle an emptier place.
Cho took to lingering around the common room before curfew, speaking to Harry in low tones in some corner. They had repaired the rift in their relationship, but in consequence spent a lot of time in each other’s pockets, chatting quietly in the window or playing games of Snap in an odd, un-companionable silence. Draco had seen them walking together in the hallways, her hand in his, and exchanging short, awkward kisses at the doors; neither of them seemed to know much what to do with the other. The most comfortable they seemed to be with each other was when they were sitting together by the Gryffindor fire, her head on his shoulder, watching the flames in a remote and disparate silence.
“Not to be rude,” Ron said under his breath, “but is he ever going to tell her to fuck off?”
They were coming back from Ravenclaw quidditch practice, which was one of the few reliable sources of fresh air. Harry came to watch, with a forlorn expression that Draco wondered wasn’t more painful than not coming. The other three had used the excuse to procure some grindylows for the next Defense Club lesson, which now resided in shrunken mason jars in Hermione’s bag.
Harry walked several paces ahead with Cho. The girl silently picked her way over the rocks. His black cloak flickered next to Cho’s blue uniform.
“That is rude,” said Daphne agreeably. “Her father’s a muggle. I’m sure she must be positively overwhelmed by despair.”
“One manages,” Hermione muttered.
“I don’t know what she wants Harry to do about that.”
“I don’t know what you want her to do about it, either,” said Daphne indulgently. “Captain the sunshine brigade?”
“Tell you what I want her to do. Three words: Pack it in.”
Daphne’s laugh was sweet and tinkling. “Ronald,” she said, “we’ll make a pureblood of you yet.”
A strange, cycling sunset darted through the spokes of passing clouds, and wind whipped the hems of their cloaks.
As they approached the clock tower courtyard, someone gave a cry. Draco was first to draw his wand, but Harry charged ahead of him, almost skidding on the wet cobble.
Four members of the Inquisitorial Squad stood in file around the comparatively tiny person of Victoria Frobisher, whom Blaise Zabini had pinned with an arm behind her back. She was struggling like a trapped dog, and Blaise had to jerk her to hold her still.
Pansy stood in front of her, hip cocked, a black armband dangling from one crooked finger. She was flanked by one dark head and a gold one: Theo and Cassius.
“…expect me to believe that, you little rat? Who gave it to you?”
“Your mum,” snarled Victoria. “And then she begged me to shove it up her—”
Pansy slapped her. Victoria shrieked.
“I’ll ask you once more, brat: who gave this to you?”
“She’s ELEVEN!” Harry roared. He shoved off Cho’s clutch on his arm and stormed into the courtyard, tearing his wand from his pocket. Pansy jumped, and Victoria gave a triumphant cry. “Take your hands off her! She’s eleven years old!”
Cho cried out, but Ron tackled Harry to the ground.
“Harry, NO!”
“Get off me! Let me go—”
Startled, Blaise dropped Victoria. She sprawled into the ground face-first, but soon sprang back up, grinning. There was a bruise on her chin.
“Now you’ve done it,” she told Pansy with relish. “Bitch! You’re in for it now.”
“Stop it,” Hermione hissed. “Go back to the common room.”
Victoria stabbed a middle finger at Pansy and shot off into the cloisters.
None of the Inquisitors were pleased by Hermione’s intervention, but least of all Cassius. The sneer he bestowed on all of them was less than amicable, but the way he looked at Hermione — with her chin high, and her teeth all but bared in a frigid smile — was warlike. His eyes spoke the language of loathing. His white knuckles added an exclamation point.
Draco stepped into the courtyard beside Hermione. Theo tensed. Draco mistook it for apprehension.
Then Daphne emerged from the cloisters behind him, her cloak drawn back, her hands raised high on either side of her head.
“Shall we all calm down?”
Her housemates regarded her with a menagerie of unhappiness.
“I quite agree,” said Cassius. “Are you feeling quite recovered from your illness, Daphne? Your sister is well, you will be glad to know.”
He said it mildly, but Theo wheeled on him and snarled something harsh and inaudible. Daphne stepped back, flattening her hand over her mouth, and shook her head. Her eyes were wide and pleading.
Confusion flickered in Cassius’s face. He hesitated, glancing between Theo and Daphne, and then said: “What the devil is into you people?”
Draco noticed it too swiftly to give it thought, but Cassius frowned at Daphne, as if he were concerned for her. What could have surprised him? Surely Cassius had made enough threats in his life to understand why she’d been shaken. Surely that was what he intended.
Unless he didn’t think it was a threat. But what would be the benefit of mentioning it? He’d called her a monster; he couldn’t possibly be sincere.
Before anyone could speak, footsteps clattered on the cobble. Neville spun into the courtyard and clutched the wall.
“Draco!” he shouted. “Harry— Hermione! Entrance Hall! Come on!”
“Longbottom, what—”
Neville slashed his hand. “No time! Come now!”
That Neville had ventured to interrupt Draco had immediate effect. Hermione spun on her heel and followed him, drawing her wand, and Ron scrambled up. He clasped Daphne’s elbow on his way out, and with a fretful glance over her shoulder at Theo, she let him draw her out of the courtyard.
Draco did not spare such a glance behind him when he followed, but Cassius’s laugh rang out in his ears as he left the courtyard.
The doors to the Entrance Hall hung wide. Draco shoved through a tightly-packed crowd, wand drawn.
A ring of students enclosed a gladiatorial space at the center of the hall. A large haunting of ghosts formed a second audience overhead. Professors and students mingled shoulder to shoulder in the medley; above them all, Umbridge presided from the first stair, her purple robes flush against the dark sea of onlookers, like a lilac planted in tar. Three patrolmen stood behind her, their caps drawn low over their faces, watching expressionlessly.
She lifted one of the Potter’s Army armbands.
“So!” she cried. “At last! Evidence of what many of you may have long suspected: that Harry Potter has tried to foment violent rebellion against the Ministry.”
Above her on the first landing of the Grand Staircase, Dumbledore stood alone, his hands folded before him. In a rare change, he wore a professor’s robes, with the ceremonial hood and cap, rather than his usual blues. The effect thinned and swallowed him: the many lines in his ancient face seemed to multiply by the second, and the little blood in it withdrew so much his skin looked cold to the touch. The professor’s robes made him seem shorter, somehow, and so feebler. His pince-nez rested on the long tip of his nose, and he peered over them at Umbridge with the intent concern of someone trying to intuit a language he did not speak.
“This movement,” she added, twisting it to and fro, “which was conceived and assembled in violation of Educational Decrees, has stationed itself firmly in opposition to the Ministry, the school administration, and any attempts at law and order. You may see here evidence of its organization, which has spread its fingers through the student body; examine the lightning-bolt, clearly modeled after Mr. Potter’s facial disfigurement — the red, for his House — not to mention its proliferation among students with disciplinary records! Of whom Mr. Potter is himself a singular example!”
Harry shoved forward, his expression as close to murder as Draco had ever seen on his small, dark face. Hermione stood beside him, her hand wrapped tightly around his wrist.
“Dolores,” cried McGonagall, shoving her way abreast of the crowd. “Abandon this circus! At Hogwarts, we handle disciplinary matters in private.”
“This is not a disciplinary matter. This is national security.”
“National security? This is a school!”
“Yes,” agreed Umbridge. “And where better to strike at a nation than the minds of its children? Albus?”
“Indeed,” he said. “I quite agree.”
“For you see, Harry Potter is not solely responsible,” she continued. “In fact, a young boy like himself can do quite little in his own right. Why should Mr. Potter have any resentment for the Ministry? Why should he abhor what is good and just, what is right and orderly, when he himself is the victim of great injustice and disorder? Why should he revile the Ministry unless someone had first taught him to? What is anarchy, after all, but contempt for authority, and reverence for those who think themselves above it?”
Draco caught sight of Snape rising from the stairwell to the dungeons, his robes unfurling from the shadow like smoke. He glanced at Umbridge, then swept his eyes through the crowd and fixed them unerringly on Draco.
A piercing pain split the front of Draco’s skull. He buckled and gripped the wall to stay upright.
Snape’s voice cut through the pain, loud and strong as a fresh memory.
SAY NOTHING.
“Draco?” Hermione grabbed his shoulder. Her face swam.
SAY NOTHING. DO NOTHING.
With some difficulty, he cleared his mind. He pictured black glass, ice on a lake, the color at the center of a candle. He summoned a place where thoughts turned flat and cold, where there was no feeling and no perception, only data and more data. It was difficult. He pushed harder, until he could feel his mind itself receding from the body, numbing to the sensations of the Entrance Hall.
Snape’s voice receded. The Potions Master’s expression flickered — pride? Or relief? — and he turned away from Draco, stepping through the ring of students at Umbridge’s feet.
“You will remember, Mr. Warrington, the testimony I gave to the Minister in October that Albus Dumbledore had been identified as an affiliate of several persons known to be in rebellion against the Ministry? Will you recite them for me?”
He smiled. “Mundungus Fletcher, Undesirable Number 273. Remus Lupin, Undesirable Number 94. Sirius Black, Undesirable Number 3—”
“On what evidence?” McGonagall cut in loudly. “Or was the bother of proving your allegations too burdensome?”
“And Alastor Moody, Undesirable Number pending, currently suspected of treason,” Cassius continued, raising his voice over hers, “in conjunction with increasing evidence of affiliation with the aforementioned.”
“I ask again: on what evidence?”
“Alastor is an old friend,” said Dumbledore calmly. “I send him Christmas cards. We fought a war together, you see.”
“Through these affiliations,” continued Umbridge, “Dumbledore has knowingly aided, abetted, and I daresay directed the activities of the underground terrorist cell known as the Order of the Phoenix. On the basis of affiliation alone, he could be summoned for questioning. He has also violated several laws compelling the disclosure of any information about the whereabouts of wanted criminals, which is a second-class offense subject to penalties not excluding imprisonment.”
“But you have no evidence,” cried McGonagall, with mean satisfaction. “You have no proof! Only one of those persons has visited Hogwarts in the last year! You are indulging in a childish grudge at the expense of the rule of law — I invite you to see what your baseless suspicions will purchase in front of a judge!”
“Minerva,” said Dumbledore, his weariness laced with tenderness. “Please.”
Umbridge’s expression did not alter from a placid, beatific smile. “But I do have evidence,” she said. She lifted her chin and spoke to the far end of the room. “Eyewitness evidence, in fact. Severus?”
Opposite her, with his back pressed against the doors to the Great Hall, Snape’s expression did not change, either. It remained empty, even as McGonagall rounded on him with visible anger in every line of her body.
“Will you confirm,” said Umbridge, in tones of recitation, “that Albus Dumbledore had secret meetings with the aforementioned persons? In Hogsmeade, Edinburgh, and London?”
Slowly, his dark eyes glittering unreadably, Snape dipped his head.
Hermione went stiff. She seized Harry’s wrist as if to restrain him, but he wasn’t moving. Draco could not see his face, but he could imagine it.
He thought: Impossible. It wasn’t possible for Snape to betray Dumbledore. It just wasn’t in Snape’s nature to do; he was vicious, but he was loyal. Narcissa had said he was loyal. She had said that he should trust Snape, even if he could trust nothing else. And he had; not just because she told him to, but because he knew his godfather, and he knew what pulled his strings. Snape was Dumbledore’s man, not for Dumbledore’s sake, but for the sake of a muggle-born girl who had died fifteen years ago.
No, it was impossible; it was insane, it was unnatural and anathema, for a man to keep a woman’s memory for fifteen years and forget her on the sixteenth. It was beyond the powers of the heart to evict something embedded so deeply, and it was beyond the powers of the mind to forget it.
“Will you confirm that he entertained these meetings for the purpose of coordinating the activities of the Order of the Phoenix, to which he belongs?”
Snape dipped his head again.
“Will you confirm,” she finished triumphantly, “that the sighting of Undesirable Number One in Godric’s Hollow on Christmas day resulted from an unsuccessful attempt to rendezvous with Albus Dumbledore?”
“Does procedure require you to confirm every item in the witness’s report?” said Snape idly. “Or do you fear an error in reading comprehension?”
“There is no need for rudeness,” she snapped. “I made a note of your involvement, as well, Professor. I remind you that the goodwill of the Ministry can be withdrawn, once earned!”
McGonagall said: “Severus, what have you done?”
“Followed orders,” said Snape, without looking at her.
“Orders!” She hitched up her skirts and swept forward with a face of vengeful promise — for a moment it looked certain that she would draw on him — but Dumbledore cleared his throat, and she wrenched herself back.
Umbridge unfolded a slip of parchment and some reading glasses from her breast pocket. “Indeed,” she said cheerfully. “To the letter, as is his duty. Now. I have here a warrant for the arrest of Albus Dumbledore. In a moment, my friends Albright and Munkover will take him into custody. But before they do, I wanted to show the student body — well, firstly, to show them that not even the highest and noblest in their regard are above the law! A sad lesson, but a necessary one. It is such a risky business, having heroes, isn’t it, Albus?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dumbledore. His voice sounded as far away as his expression. “For my part, I never do.”
“Do something,” Ron muttered. His fists were balled, and he was glaring at Dumbledore as if he could perform the Imperius wordless and wandless. “Do something. Stop standing there like an idiot. Fight.”
“He can’t,” said Hermione under her breath.
“He could try.”
“Try what, Ron? She has a warrant—”
“Jinx Snape. Jinx Umbridge! I don’t fucking know, Hermione!”
Harry had started to shake. Draco drew his wand.
Say nothing. Do nothing.
It was impossible for a man to cast off vows like Snape’s. There were some things the law could not command. Forgetting was one of them. He had to believe, even if no one else did, that his godfather was the kind of man who did not forget his promises. Because it was the only way he could believe that Snape would try to keep his promise to him, Draco Malfoy, a boy he had known since birth and before it. A boy whose life had been entrusted to him by Narcissa, in case of the worst. A boy whom he once sent Lucius Malfoy’s cigarette lighter as a Christmas present, and taught Dark curses from the margins of his book.
It was an odd language of affection, to be sure. But perhaps it was the only tongue available to someone who had lived so long and so far beyond the light of others’ love, and by the time the light grazed him again, his heart had grown strange and hairy in the dark.
Say nothing. Do nothing.
Umbridge handed the warrant off to Cassius and signaled to the patrolmen, who drew their wands.
“Moreover,” she announced, “I want to offer all students with any knowledge of this… ‘Potter’s Army,’ or the Order of the Phoenix, or any other insurgent movements of which they may be aware, the opportunity to come forward. I am not unreasonable! Come to my office with any information about the crimes of Albus Dumbledore, and you will have my protection. And remember that I will reward generosity in kind.”
A round of whispering erupted. Umbridge waited for it to dwindle, smiling patiently, before she spoke again. “I will also offer you the chance to confess. Those who do not will be prosecuted, but dealt with privately, discreetly… I remind you that for those students who are of-age, that crime is punishable by imprisonment in Azkaban. For children, expulsion, and a permanent revocation of your license to practice magic.” She regarded the crowd seriously over her reading glasses. “I will warn you now that for some of you, evidence of such involvement already exists. The guilty should hence feel especially forthcoming, as they are in most need of my generosity.”
Whatever thin strand held Harry’s patience snapped. He dove into the crowd and cleaved apart the wall of students, who parted with mingled cries.
“It’s not their fault!” he screamed. “It’s me you want, isn’t it? It’s me—”
“HARRY!”
“Harry, no!”
Agitation cracked the horrified hush. Behind Harry, Ginny wrestled out of the crowd with her own wand drawn, no doubt encouraged by his example; Fred and George flanked her. At her elbow, Luna Lovegood was rocking on her heels, red-faced, as if physically buffeted by fury.
Suddenly it felt as if everything was happening very slowly, or Draco was living in double-time. He could see the whole room at once, each scowl and grimace, every bared snarl, each hand poised on a wandsheath. He saw the patrolmen gazing with keen and dangerous interest at Harry. He saw Umbridge, whose eyes gleamed covetously as Harry stepped into the ring.
“Take me, then!” Harry was shouting. His voice was high and strained and not entirely lucid. He kept striding toward Umbridge, who subtly gestured for the patrolmen to stand down. “You win! Take me and be fucking done with it all — you want something to arrest me for? FINE! Here you go!”
He reached for his wand. McGonagall gasped.
Ron lunged for him only too late. Hermione cried out, but it was Draco who raised his arm.
It was a clean line, a perfect hit, the pride of any duelist: the Stunning Spell streaked neatly through a chink in the crowd and struck the square of Harry’s back. He collapsed, and Ginny dove to catch him.
Noise erupted. The students surged back in a buffering wave, knocking everyone back. Umbridge, with a shade of disappointment coloring her face, called over the din: “Thank you for that… heroism, Mr. Malfoy. It was quite unnecessary, but I thank you for it.”
Draco said nothing. His heart pounded bruises on the inside of his chest. He lowered his wand and jerked his chin in acknowledgement, which thankfully was enough for her to move on.
“Oh thank God,” Hermione breathed. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. Thank God for you, thank you, thank God.” She was staring at the unconscious Harry and gripping Draco’s offhand so that his fingers grew numb. Fred and George quickly fumbled the unconscious Harry out of Umbridge’s line of sight, and McGonagall shepherded them closely, her own hand never straying from her wand.
There was too much babbling to hear what happened next: Umbridge said something to the patrolmen, who turned and began to advance on Dumbledore. Dumbledore watched them approach curiously, as if he really had no idea what they intended to do. One of them extended a hand and began talking quickly, gesturing at the door. The other kept his hand on his wand.
“Ah,” said Dumbledore, cocking his head in understanding. The clamor dimmed at the sound of his voice. “You would like me to come quietly.”
“It is not a question of what we would like,” said Umbridge, her disappointment fading quickly into a sunny smile. “You see, I do not think even you would be so reckless as to start a fight in a room full of children.”
Hermione’s grip tightened, then slackened.
“Oh, you bitch,” she said, with a low and wondrous passion.
“What is your end here, Dolores?” inquired Dumbledore. “I ascertain that you mean to convict me. Very well. What then?”
Her face wrinkled. “That will be decided by the jury,” she sniffed. “It will be out of my purview— I may give recommendations, of course, as a witness—”
“Yes? And where will you tell them to put me?” He cut across her effortlessly, his voice crushing hers beneath its velvety grandeur. “Azkaban? Nurmengard? I fail to grasp your intentions. Do you think you possess a prison that would hold me, if I wished to leave it?”
Umbridge’s mouth fell open; a wave of murmurs crested over the crowd.
“You,” she said, “may think that — many wizards do — that they are invulnerable, but—”
“Did it never occur to you that a prison could fail?”
“—but you will obey the law, in the end, as everyone must—”
“Did you never imagine a wall could break?”
“You will surrender yourself to Ministry custody,” she said angrily, mastering herself. “You will be tried. And you will be imprisoned. And we will build a prison to hold you, if we must.”
“Another prison?” he said sadly. “Is that the best you can do? Try, Dolores. Just once, for your old teacher. Try to think a little harder.”
“Do not lecture me! You have obstructed justice and engaged in political scheming to indemnify Harry Potter from prosecution. Your mismanagement of this school has resulted in countless injuries, an international political crisis, and the death of an auror, not to mention a seventeen-year-old boy. You have conspired against justice, order, and goodness, to effect a violent revolution, and enlist children in your petty wars. You are a corrupter, a manipulator, a rabble-rouser— a pitiful old man with delusions of grandeur,” Umbridge spat, panting, “and you will face justice — if it is the last — thing — I do!”
“My justice has been much delayed,” agreed Dumbledore. “But I have a long road yet to tread before it finds me. Your justice, on the other hand, I suspect is not far behind you.” He turned to the Deputy Headmistress, who stood rigidly at the foot of the stairs — poised, it seemed, to attack.
“Minerva, keep the fires burning,” he said. “When I return, I will not come quietly, either.”
“Yes, sir.”
He drew his wand. Something glittered at his wrist: a silver keyring, strung with charms, whose shape he recollected as if from a distant dream.
“And to my students,” he said, “I leave my best advice, which is a warning. The enemy lies not before you, nor ahead, but in your mind, where its power is deepest and strongest; in times of grief and suffering, when you fear you cannot stand the weight you bear, the enemy is the lie that you must stand alone. Remember your enemy; to resist him is to resist anything.”
He lifted his hands over his head. Umbridge cried out.
There was a thunderclap like a giant snapping its fingers.
Light filled the castle, blinding as the birth of a sun. The room’s features sank into pure white. Draco threw his arm over his eyes. Around him there came the rolling cries and thuds of a room dropping to its knees. Hermione’s hand clenched his as she sank down, head buried in her arm. A piercing whistle split the air.
The doors slammed against the walls, thrown open by some great thrust. Wind flung itself moaning into the hall, and fingers of fog trawled in. The grey and sodden courtyard lay dull under a curtain of rain. High overhead, a flame-bright bird with a long tail flapped its wings and gave a shuddering cry.
Hermione gave a throttled sob, and then clapped her hand over her mouth angrily, as if chastising herself. Whispers ran in rising cross-currents among the students. A few gave cries of dismay, but they were soon silenced by prefects and patrolmen.
Dumbledore was gone. As the rain began to fall, the patrolmen came down and picked over the courtyard, looking for evidence of where he had gone. They did not find it, and by and by, they left.
-Thanks for sticking with me, lads. We’re crawling back out of the black pit, but we’re like, making a home for ourselves in the shallows.
-I’ve been struggling to keep up with comments, but I do read as many of them as I can. Thank you so much for your generosity and your continued attention, it’s a pit-lantern. If you’ve commented on the last chapter, I hope you find an elaborate and beautiful lamp.
-Next chapter should be along in a couple weeks; title: “Potter’s Army.”
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