"I'm not sure I understand why the Death Eaters targeted Muggle-borns," Percy asked carefully, hoping to get an answer to the question he really wanted to ask: Why so much death, so much bloodshed, when there are so few of us already?
Lucius spread his hands a little where they rested interlaced on the table. "Hogwarts is Unplottable, shielded by enchantments that make it look like a ruined abbey to Muggle eyes. Your own village is surrounded by misdirection spells. Do you know why?"
"So that Muggles won't stumble across them."
"And why should that matter? Why do we take so much care to preserve secrecy?"
There was only one answer to that. Unwillingly, Percy gave it. "Because Muggles are a threat to us."
Lucius smiled, pleased, and the pale hoarfrost of his eyes warmed a little in the glow of the morning sun. "The history lessons you received at Hogwarts, the Muggle Studies courses... well, shall we say, they glossed over certain things in favor of telling fairy tales to children – the tale of Wendelin the Weird, for instance, who might have enjoyed being burned at the stake but probably did not enjoy dying on the gallows. Muggles are not the harmless, charmingly eccentric pets that your father believes them to be. They can be as savage to those who are different as the most sadistic Death Eater, they do not take well to sharing their land, and witches and wizards are bogeymen to them. They believe that we drink the blood of infants during Satan-worshipping revels, did you know, and that we pull unsuspecting Muggles from their beds, saddle them like horses, and ride them until they die."
Percy blinked. "But... but we don't. We've never done those things."
"No. Nor do we curse their cattle to give curdled milk, or blight their crops, or curse men with impotence and women with miscarriages. Nonetheless, they believe that we do, and for most of human history the mere accusation of witchcraft has been a sentence of prolonged and painful death."
Outside the window, the cry of a gull soared over the sound of the waves. Percy wanted to say something, and didn't know what to say.
"Our safety is in secrecy. Every Muggle-born admitted to Hogwarts threatens that secrecy; every one of them has family, parents, siblings, who must be told about our world. There are steps that can be taken to ensure that no bitter or envious relative goes to the Muggle authorities and lays the secret of our world bare; but every Muggle-born in our world means two or three, or a dozen, Muggles who know of our existence, and eventually, child, one of those Muggles will slip through the cracks. Eventually someone will talk to someone who will listen, to someone who will believe... and then you will see slaughter that will make the Death Eaters look like the right hand of salvation."
"But it hasn't happened so far, and Muggle-borns have been coming to Hogwarts since the Founding," Percy argued.
"No. By very great care and a good deal of luck, it has not. But in the Founders' day we were so much more powerful than the Muggles that we might as well have been gods; if nothing else, we could buy silence with terror. Now... there is not a spell known to wizardkind that will stop bullets," Lucius answered quietly. "Even a hundred years ago we might have had the advantage in a conflict. We would not have it now."
Percy looked down at his parchment. There were a few scant scribbles on it, not enough to show for the morning. He wanted his father, and there was no way back over a bridge that had been burned that many years ago.
"I've upset you," Lucius said gently. "Perhaps I'm wrong. The precedent is in your favor, after all, not in mine. The wizarding world has stood this long, and at any rate will not fall today."
Gathering the shreds of his dignity around himself, Percy answered, "It's only that I've never quite heard it put that way."
"Of course not. You were raised to believe that Muggles are harmless, curiosities, creatures to be protected as if we and not they were the dominant species on this world. Or given that idea by your father, at any rate – your mother, I believe, knows better."
His mother's voice, raging through the Burrow at dawn and echoing now in his ears: You could have been killed, you could have been seen...
"But come, now. We've gotten off the topic. You were telling me about the Dark Mark appearing over settlements in... where was it?"
Percy cleared his throat. "Norfolk and Westmorland. That makes five instances in the last nine weeks, and in Norfolk a family's home was burned to the ground – the mother gave evidence in the Lestrange trial, not Bellatrix's but the first one. If they hadn't been called away suddenly by a family emergency, they would have burned along with the house, because the doors and windows were all sealed. As it was, they lost their home and all of their livestock."
Lucius tilted his head thoughtfully. "And in Westmorland?"
"The Mark appeared over a graveyard. Some of the graves were disturbed." The bodies of four people killed in Voldemort's first rising had been dug up and arranged around a table in the middle of the cemetery, teacups filled and set before them, plates with teacakes arranged carefully, their skeletonized jaws fallen in a parody of laughter. A few feet away, on top of a low marble sarcophagus, a victrola played a scratchy record over and over, tinny music striking flat against the mist. His father had been there with two other members of his department, examining the victrola; Percy had turned away and followed Minister Fudge across the damp, muddy ground to the tea tent, where no one had had much of an appetite for tea.
The bits of the song Percy could remember had been stuck in his head for days: There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover tomorrow, just you wait and see… Someone in the Death Eaters, it had struck him, had a sense of humor remarkably like Fred's and George's.
"And what has the Ministry done about all this?" Lucius asked.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, sir." Nothing. They'd done nothing. The first few times the Mark had appeared, only the Mark and nothing else, they had blamed it on teenagers playing a cruel joke, and Percy had believed them. Then he'd seen one for himself, and remembered the last time he'd seen it, and… and he still wanted to believe the Ministry, and didn't know how.
"I see," Lucius remarked. "And what would you have me tell you?"
Percy opened his mouth, then suddenly had no desire at all to say what he had intended to say. "I'm meant to ask you what you think is behind all this – if you even think it sounds like something Death Eaters would do, and if so, why you think they're doing it," he said slowly.
"Indeed," Lucius answered softly. "And what answer are you meant to bring back?"
That it isn't the Death Eaters at all. That was the first thought that sprang into Percy's head, and he quelled it, furious with himself. The Ministry had not sent him here to find excuses for their own inaction. "I – whatever answer you give me."
Lucius leaned back in his chair, looking disapproving. "Come, Mr. Weasley, you're cannier than that. The Minister didn't send you here to make busy-work for you, and they have no reason to believe that I will cheerfully hand over information about what the Dark Lord's plans might be. You're here because the Ministry thinks that what answers I do give you will be useful to them, but they do not expect those answers to be the truth."
"Do you still support him, then?" Percy asked, and was bewildered and annoyed to feel a pang of something like betrayal.
"I supported Tom Riddle's vision, and support it still," Lucius answered softly; the careful mask slipped away from his features for the first time Percy had ever seen, and he looked tired and wistful. "Strength and safety for our world, and order. I even, do you know, envisioned remaking Hogwarts and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang as places of great learning instead of mind camps where small children are taught to think in black and white when they are allowed to think at all, when they are not being raised to be soldiers, blindly and fanatically loyal. But that was long ago, and I do not think there is much of Tom Riddle left in Lord Voldemort."
The sun was high above the sea outside. It would be noon before long, and Percy's visit over, and he had asked almost nothing of what he was supposed to ask. "Do you," he began, and cleared his throat. "Do you think that the Death Eaters are behind the attacks I've told you about? Do they sound like things they would do?"
The mask slid almost imperceptibly back over Lucius' features, and he brought the tips of his steepled index fingers up to his lower lip. "Oh, yes," he said mildly. "I have no way of knowing, of course, but – you must understand, the Death Eaters did not always attract revolutionaries. As the Dark Lord's activities became more scattered, more focused on the most violent means to any end and power for power's sake, his forces began to attract… others. Those of us in his inner circle began to feel like a wolf pack ringed on a hilltop by carrion dogs, watching as they brought down deer not for food but for the sheer joy of rending flesh in their jaws."
"But you participated in the attack on Muggles at the Quidditch World Cup," Percy reminded Lucius, glancing sharply up at him. One of those Death Eaters had bloody near broken his nose, and he didn't particularly care whether that fist had belonged to a wolf or a hyena.
Cynical humor sparked in Lucius' eyes. "Yes, whereas the Ministry, great protectors of Muggles that they are, were content to rape the park rangers of their memories over and over until they no longer even knew where or who they were. As I've said, however distasteful it might have been to act, it was lethal to refuse, or we believed it to be at the time."
"But –"
A key rasped in the doorway behind him and an Auror stepped through. "Time's up, Mr. Weasley," she announced cheerily, making Percy blink as though he'd stepped unexpectedly out into the light.
He left obediently, mind churning with questions that were not on his list.
At any other time he would have found it amusing, the sea of red hair over black robes. But not now.
Unwilling to join the crowd of Weasleys just yet, Harry stood in the shelter of a broad, ancient oak across the road from the cemetery and watched, picking familiar faces out of the crowd. Bill and Charlie, talking quietly by a tall marble obelisk. Fred and George, somber and subdued for once, hand in hand like children in the lee of a crumbling mausoleum away from the wind and rain. Molly weeping in the circle of Arthur's arm. Ron and Hermione talking stiffly by the gates.
"Jesus," Harry said under his breath. "What a bloody mess."
"Isn't it though?" Remus answered from beside him, making Harry jump half out of his skin.
"Remus," he exclaimed in relief. "When did you get here?"
"Just now. The floo network doesn't seem to like Ottery St. Catchpole."
Harry made a face. "I know. I didn't like to floo into the Burrow so I used the public fireplace at the pub and it took me three tries. The network dumped me back out in Hogsmeade the first time, and the second I think it took me to the Channel Islands."
Remus laughed ruefully. He wasn't looking quite as drawn as he had the last time Harry had spoken to him but he still seemed tired, and that brass-handled cane was no longer purely decorative. The head of the cane was carved in a wolf's head, snarling; Harry could never quite decide if that was indicative of defiant self-acceptance or of Remus' rather morbid sense of humor. "Well, we're still early, anyway. No need to go over just yet."
"No," Harry agreed, his gaze drifting back to the cemetery. Ginny's grave was out of his line of sight, obscured by weather-worn markers, forlorn trees, marble angels bent with weeping. The rain would be soaking them, pooling at their feet, droplets sliding down cold faces from unseeing eyes.
"I couldn't have married her, you know," he found himself saying. "Ginny, she was... she would always have been Ron's little sister, wouldn't she? It's a piss-poor reason to get together with someone, just because she's your best friend's sister and she had a crush on the Boy Who bloody Lived when she was ten years old."
"Ah," Remus said gently, sliding a hand onto Harry's shoulder. "I wondered when that was going to come out."
"It's just that I think Ron and Molly and Hermione had it all planned out between them, that I was meant to marry Ginny; and I liked her, Remus, I did, even when she didn't like me very much, but I never loved her. And I always felt awful about it and now it's too late." Harry swallowed hard, closing his eyes against the sting of tears.
"Harry," Remus murmured. "You can't love someone just because you think you're supposed to. It was a damn good thing for the both of you that you're wise enough to see that and not try."
"I know. I know it would have been worse to try. I just... I can't help feeling like I've let the Weasleys down, and they're the only family I've ever known."
Remus' hand tightened reassuringly on his shoulder. "You know, your mother once told me that guilt is nature's way of telling us that we're good people, because bad people never feel guilty about anything. I don't know how right she was, but it's a comforting thing to think, isn't it?"
Harry laughed a little and slipped his fingertips under his glasses to rub at his eyes. "I suppose so."
Blinking his vision clear again, he glanced across the road. "Kingsley's here. And is that Tonks with him?"
"Yes. There are a number of Order members here, and more Aurors out of sight, I suspect," Remus answered.
Harry glanced sharply at him. "Why?"
"In case Percy shows up under a disguise, of course. The odds that he will are vanishingly small, Percy not being a fool, but... well, Ginny was his sister." Remus pulled a pocket watch out of his robes and glanced at it. "We should probably – ah, here comes Hermione."
Harry looked back to see Hermione hurrying across the road toward them, robes gathered in her hands to keep the hem from trailing in the mud. Behind her, Ron lifted a hand to Harry and Remus and then disappeared through the lich-gate.
"What are the two of you doing over here?" she scolded as she came up to them. "It's almost time for the funeral to start, you should be –"
"Hello to you too, Hermione," Harry interrupted patiently.
Hermione sighed and brushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand in a quick, fretful movement. "Oh, Harry, I'm sorry. It's good to see you, and you too, Remus."
"Hello, Hermione," Remus answered. "How have you been? Harry tells me you've been working too hard, as usual."
Hermione's face tightened a little and she looked away. "I'm fine," she answered in a tone that effectively closed off further questions. "Upset, of course, but aren't we all? I've missed you both and I want to catch up later, but really we should –"
"All right," Harry sighed. "I suppose we'd better go over."
Offering Hermione his arm, he stepped out into the road. As soon as his foot struck the packed earth, he felt as if some protective circle had been broken.
"I am the resurrection and the life..."
Hermione was still clinging tightly to Harry's arm on one side of him; Ron stood pale and still on the other. Someone had cast a rain-repelling spell over the funeral party and water sheeted strangely down its sides, splashing onto an invisible dome overhead with what ought to have been a drumming sound and was eerily silent instead. If not for the vicar's voice and Molly's low weeping, Harry might have felt as if he'd gone deaf.
He wondered suddenly if someone had taken him to his parents' funeral. He'd have to remember to ask Remus, after.
"Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days..."
Ginny's casket was plain and wooden, strewn with flowers along the top. It can't be Ginny in there, Harry found himself thinking, and bit his lip. Hermione glanced worriedly up at him; he tried to smile reassuringly, and couldn't.
The last time he'd seen Ginny had been at the Burrow toward the middle of summer. She had worn a green sleeveless top that somehow managed not to clash horribly with her hair and laughed when he reached for a biscuit fresh from the oven and burned his fingers on melted chocolate. Ron and Hermione had still been married then, and Molly had looked twenty years younger than she looked today.
Let me know mine end, and the number of my days.
"For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were..."
Harry let his gaze drift past the vicar to where the rest of the cemetery lay beyond a shimmering veil of rainwater. The lawn sloped gently down toward a thicket of trees, dotted with row after row of monuments that wavered and ran in his sight, liquid grey. Past them, Harry thought he could see, barely visible, a circle of low, plain headstones huddled amongst the trees, separated from the rest of the graves by a narrow stream. A family plot, maybe. Another thing he'd have to remember to ask about.
There was nothing he could do. Ginny was dead, the Weasleys were grieving, Ron and Hermione's marriage was broken beyond repair, and God only knew what had become of Percy or why. Harry couldn't fix things; he couldn't even help; there was nothing he could do.
He hadn't felt so powerless since before he came to Hogwarts. All this training, all this magic, so many things won and lost, and after fourteen years Harry was a child in a closet again.
"In the midst of life we are in death..."
Hermione was crying softly, leaning against his arm. It began to rain harder, water pouring down the sides of the dome like a river; in the distance, a low roll of thunder echoed like the rattling of bones. Harry wanted to go home.
Molly was throwing a handful of earth into the grave.
"...earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life..."
Goodbye, Ginny, Harry thought, and looked away.
Ron pulled his hood up against the rain and moved farther back under the shelter of the pub's overhanging roof. "You sure you don't want to come back with us, mate?"
"I want to, but I can't," Harry answered. "I've been behind in writing my lectures as it is, and I don't dare go into Defence unprepared. Those bloody third-years think everyone over twenty is senile as it is."
Ron gave an absent snort, not quite a laugh, and looked through the wavy glass of the window to see Arthur disappearing in a puff of floo smoke. "Well, good luck with them. I'd better get back to the Burrow before Mum starts worrying."
Harry remembered the clock at the Burrow, with one hand for each of the Weasleys. He wondered if Ginny's hand had pointed to "Mortal Peril" for as long as it took Percy to raise his wand, and then vanished. "Ron, I..."
Ron did smile then; a wan, strained smile but a smile nonetheless. "I know. See you, then."
"See you," Harry echoed, and Ron headed inside.
For a few minutes Harry stood watching the rain. At this distance he could just see the little cluster of graves in the woods; the graveyard beyond them was lost in the mist. He'd stay a while longer, he decided, have a drink with Remus and Hermione, and then go home.
"Filthy weather," Remus observed, making Harry jump half an inch off the ground. He hadn't heard the door open.
"Isn't it?" Harry replied in a daze, trying to calm his nerves and slow his heart down.
Remus looked keenly at him for a moment, then smiled. "Come inside and have a drink, Harry. Hermione's gone home already. She said to tell you she'd get in touch with you later. I think... well, she seemed very upset. Best for her if she goes home and gets some rest."
Harry nodded. "I do need a drink. And a fire, it's bloody damp out here. It's roasting up at Hogwarts, and here, it's..."
"Devon," Remus said succinctly, and Harry laughed.
"All right. I'll stand the first round," he offered; and found himself not moving, still trying to pick out shapes in the fog obscuring the cemetery. "Remus, do you know who's buried over there? Those graves that are apart from the others."
Remus glanced in the direction Harry was pointing. "Ah," he said softly. "Those are... well, until recently – twenty or thirty years ago, probably – there were certain portions of the wizarding population who were buried apart from the main cemeteries. Squibs, mostly, or werewolves, or various other... unfortunates. I think it was thought at one time that we were more likely to walk; hence the running water."
Harry was sorry he'd asked, and wondered if the wizarding world would ever stop having unpleasant surprises for him. "Let's go inside," he said wearily, turning back toward the pub.
"I get the feeling that I rather put my foot in it with Hermione," Remus observed when Harry returned with two glasses of firewhiskey. They'd claimed a corner with two chintz-covered chairs by a burning fireplace; Remus was leaning against the mantel, angling his bad hip toward the fire. "Did I say something wrong?"
Harry grimaced, handed Remus' glass to him, and took a drink. The firewhiskey was smooth on his tongue, spreading welcome warmth through him as he settled into one of the chairs. "She got passed over for a promotion at the Ministry. She deserved the promotion, she's the best researcher they have, but scuttlebutt from the department is that her superiors hate her because she's always pointing out when they're wrong. I suppose you can only jump in and answer a question meant for your supervisor so many times before you start putting people's backs up."
"Damn," Remus sighed. "Isn't anything going well for any member of that family?"
"The twins' business is booming. They can barely keep up the mail-order end and still keep the store stocked, the orders are coming in that fast. When I was at the Burrow over the summer they were thinking about taking on an apprentice or two." Harry smiled wryly. "Even Molly's had to admit that they're doing bloody well for themselves."
Remus murmured approval.
"Remus..." Harry looked down into his firewhiskey, swirling it lightly. "Did anyone take me to my parents' funeral?"
"No," Remus said quietly. "Maybe someone should have. But you were so young that you wouldn't have remembered anyway, and things were so... well, even if I hadn't been blindsided by what happened I wouldn't have wanted to brave your aunt's wrath to fetch you and bring you back."
"Yeah, I can understand that."
Remus was silent for a minute, and Harry looked up to meet a gaze more penetrating than he was comfortable with at the moment. "I know you can, Harry. I hope you'll never have cause to understand it any better than you do now, but I'm afraid you might before the end."
"I've thought a lot about you and Sirius," Harry said. "And I think about me and Ron, and how I'd feel if I thought he ever did something like what you thought Sirius did. I don't know if I'd be able to believe it of him. But then, you probably would have said the same thing when you were at school."
"Oh, yes," Remus answered. "I think I would have. I could have imagined him doing any number of things out of thoughtlessness or impatience or boredom, but something like that… no."
Harry tilted his head back against the antimacassar, closing his eyes briefly. He'd woken early and lain in the dark for hours, staring up at his canopy until the carvings on the posts surfaced from shadow into grey light. "What made you suspect each other of being the spy, Remus? I don't mean to pry. I've just never really understood, I suppose."
Remus settled stiffly into the armchair across from Harry, firelight glimmering amber from the drink in his hand. "Before I can make you understand that, I think you need to understand something about Peter."
Harry nodded.
For a moment Remus hesitated, turning the tumbler idly in his hands. "Understand, Harry, this isn't something I'm terribly proud of. There are a lot of things I'm not terribly proud of, but... Well. Peter.
"I don't want to give you the impression that we didn't like him, or suffered him to tag along after us with that genial contempt that teenage boys are so very good at. Peter was – and still is, I suppose, curse him – much cleverer than he looks on first acquaintance; he has a quick wit, and if it tended more toward the hurtful than I liked... well, so did James' and Sirius', in those days. He had good ideas for things to do, came up with pranks to play, held his own in conversation. He could be a very congenial person to spend time with, if he had a mind to be."
"This all sounds like it's leading up to a 'But...'," Harry commented.
Remus smiled wryly. "Well spotted, Harry, indeed it is. He was our friend, he was the right sort, he was one of us, and yet, and yet. If anyone got forgotten, overlooked, or left behind, it would be Peter. We'd find ourselves telling him all about things we'd done, forgetting that he was there too; or we'd forget to tell him things, assuming that he'd been there at the time, when in fact he hadn't. If James or Sirius were missing, you understand, it left an empty space that couldn't be overlooked, but Peter was easier to mislay. And... well, it's easier to see things like this in hindsight so I honestly don't know if they occurred to me at the time, but Peter was always just a bit too effusive in his compliments, just a bit too ready to lord his position as one of James' cronies over other students. James and Sirius were kind to others as often as they were unkind, but Peter..." Remus took a drink of his firewhiskey and looked meditatively down into the tumbler.
"Every group of boys, you know, has a role for each of the members. And so did ours; James was the leader, Sirius was the handsome one, I was a werewolf and therefore a subject of some interest – and to a lesser extent, I suppose, I was the bright one, the one everyone else went to for help with their homework. Peter wasn't handsome, was neither notably stupid nor terribly bright, wasn't the cleverest or the wittiest, had no real gifts or interests that made him notable. And so, without ever being disregarded, he was never quite the center of attention."
"I think I would have traded places with him," Harry said; then, hearing the bitterness in his own voice, he colored and took a gulp of his whiskey.
"Would you indeed? I'm not at all sure that I would have. It's easier to make your peace with what you are, I think, than to make your peace with what you want to be and aren't. Peter very much wanted to be important, to be looked up to, to have the favor of the people who were popular. And when he was overlooked he'd smile and accept our apologies and tell us that it was all right, when even then we could see that it wasn't."
"Well, he's got an important role now, all right," Harry said tightly.
"Yes, he does, and one we won't forget or overlook. Well... one I won't forget or overlook, now, I suppose." Remus looked away, into the fire, and the softening of the lines in his face in the dim light somehow made him look older.
"I'm sorry," Harry said miserably. "If you don't want to –"
"Ah, but we were coming to the answer to your question. I think I actually answered it a minute ago and then overshot it, as a matter of fact. Sirius and I each suspected the other of being the spy because, quite simply, we overlooked Peter. Again. We were both, in our way, closer to James; we each had talents that could have served the Dark Lord well; from a certain perspective – a rather narrow and naive perspective, true, but not an unreasonable one – there was every reason for the Death Eaters to want to recruit one or the other of us but no reason for them to bypass us completely and target Peter. And I will tell you frankly that I didn't believe Peter to have the kind of skill and initiative that it would take to maintain that sort of deception for very long."
"So you each were thinking that there were only two people the spy could be..."
"And I knew it wasn't me," Remus said with a grim smile. "My God, I would have given anything to find someone else to suspect instead of Sirius. Just the thought of how it would have broken James' heart..."
"But he knew. Sirius knew, after that blowup in the street. Why the hell didn't he tell anyone, instead of just laughing and letting them cart him off to Azkaban for ten bloody years?" Anger flared in Harry, hot and hurtful, and he took a deep breath and tried to force it back down.
Remus shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Harry. I suppose I was waiting for the right time to ask, and it never came."
Harry looked away.
"You're welcome to stay with me tonight, you know," Remus said gently. "My guest room might not be splendid but the bed's made and there aren't any draughts, and my bar is currently fairly well-stocked."
"I wish I could," Harry answered regretfully. "I have a lecture to revise, and I should probably finish next week's lesson plans for Defence."
"Ah, yes, I remember that all too well. It's a cliché to say that life goes on, but it does, doesn't it?" Remus regarded his cane thoughtfully, lapsing into silence, and Harry could guess the direction of his thoughts.
"Let's have dinner before I go," he said, looking out at the mist. Life might go on, but there was nothing to say that it couldn't bloody wait for a while.
The sun had just set when he stepped out of the fireplace at the back of the Three Broomsticks, and the unseasonable warmth eased Ottery St. Catchpole's chill comfortably out of his bones. Madame Rosmerta gave him a brief, absently sympathetic smile before she returned to polishing glasses, and Harry looked away from the keenly interested glances of the pub's few other patrons. Another time he might have stayed to have a pint and a chat with Rosmerta; at the moment he couldn't face questions, even well-meaning questions, from anyone.
He could have walked the path back to Hogwarts in his sleep, this path or any of the others. It seemed shorter now than it had seemed when he was a boy, shrunken in that way that childhood things always do. Hogwarts itself was the only thing that didn't seem smaller now; it still loomed over the land around, filled with cavernous halls and intricate stonework and staircases that swung out over too long a drop. It kept memories from fading; maybe it kept them all children for far too long. For the first time, Harry found himself questioning the wisdom of coming back.
None of that, he told himself sternly. You've made your bed, haven't you?
He'd only walked this path with Ginny a couple of times. By the time she'd been old enough to go on Hogsmeade weekends, she'd had her own friends, and hadn't been inclined to tag along after Ron's. Harry remembered walking slowly so that she could keep up. There was nothing he could do that would let her keep up now.
Just inside the gate, he paused, looking up at the castle. It looked claustrophobic suddenly, so many tons of stone and shadow and ghosts that popped up when you least expected them. Please, God, don't let that happen to Ginny. Don't let her walk. Not there, not at the Burrow. Not with Molly and her sweaters and the damned chickens.
He couldn't go in yet. For a moment he debated going to the greenhouse to see if Neville was there; then he changed his mind and headed toward the Quidditch pitch. He could use one of the school brooms, maybe, and fly for a while.
When he got there, though, the Quidditch pitch was occupied. The Slytherin team was practicing, green robes almost black in the failing light, filling the pitch with catcalls and laughter and shouted orders. A familiar voice caught Harry's attention and he glanced down to the far end of the pitch to see Malfoy cut deftly across the path of one of the Chasers, flying faster and surer than his cygnets, wearing gear and robes that Harry almost mistook for Gryffindor before he recognized France's white-trimmed scarlet. The Chaser hovered for a moment, watching Malfoy swerve in a complicated Mobius strip of a movement, then imitated him with more bloody-minded determination than accuracy. Malfoy drew up to hover beside her, spoke to her for a moment, and left her practicing the maneuver while he headed toward Slytherin's Seeker.
On the side of the pitch closest to Harry, one of the Beaters, in an astoundingly illegal move, smashed the Quaffle toward the goal. The Keeper blocked it by sheer virtue of dropping down underneath her broom, hanging on with both hands, and kicking the Quaffle away. The Beater shrieked indignantly and the Keeper howled with laughter, swinging herself deftly back up onto her broom.
Look at them, Harry thought. All those years we thought the Slytherins were such evil monsters, and all the time they were just little boys and girls.
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, feeling the wind on his face and listening to the calls and laughter echo from one end of the Quidditch pitch to the other, carrying for what seemed like forever in the still twilight. It was too soon and he was too raw to feel anything like happiness or contentment... but he felt as if he'd been allowed to come back from the dead himself for just one day, to remember what it had felt like to be flesh and blood.
Draco's voice rose above the children's, calling them into a full-team variant of the Hawkshead formation, and Harry saw a dozen ways he could have flown against that attack.
They landed in the dark without seeing him. Harry went back to the castle and sat in the courtyard to wait, not knowing why other than a vague sense that he didn't want to sit alone in his rooms with nothing to do but read or review lesson plans again. Maybe I should have stayed with Remus after all, he thought, watching the light from the three-quarter moon silver the fountain. Or possibly he should have stayed at the Burrow with Ron; but he'd been unable to face the prospect, unable to keep from feeling as if he would be intruding at the worst possible time, unable to face Molly's and Arthur's grief. Bloody coward, he told himself, and sighed.
He heard the Slytherin team before he saw them, chattering excitedly about the last match Malfoy had flown with France, in which Ireland hadn't known what hit them. One of the girls – Harry tried to place her voice from classes and couldn't – was grilling Malfoy about a Wronsky Feint variant that he had apparently made up on the fly, which had won the match for France and nearly cost Malfoy and the Irish seeker both an extended stay in the hospital. One of the boys cut into the conversation, spiritedly arguing some obscure point about the physics of Quidditch, and –
- and the minute they stepped into the courtyard and saw Harry, they fell silent, retreating behind such flawlessly Slytherin sneers that it seemed inconceivable that they were the same children who had been chattering so happily a moment before. Malfoy gave Harry a cool, civil nod and shepherded his charges inside.
"Well, fuck," Harry said softly, and suddenly felt unspeakably stupid. Fourteen years, and he'd somehow managed to forget for a minute that he and Malfoy couldn't stand one another.
He sat down on the side of the fountain and drew a hand through the water, watching the moon's reflection ripple, fragment, and surge back together under his fingers. Maybe he'd go see if he could dig Neville out of the greenhouse after all; he was good company, even if he tended to dwell a bit much on the inner workings of plant life, and Harry had been glad that he'd taken over the Herbology position when Professor Sprout retired. Yes, he'd go fetch Neville, and maybe the two of them could have a drink before Harry had to start on his lecture, and then it would be that much longer before Harry had to be alone with his thoughts.
"Did you want something, Potter?"
Harry whirled, badly startled, to see Malfoy leaning against a stone archway, shining with silver edges in the moonlight. There was no annoyance in that cool drawl; neither was there welcome, but Harry was in a mood to count his blessings. "Malfoy. I just – I wondered –"
"You wondered?" Malfoy prodded irksomely, cutting Harry off just as he'd gotten words together.
"If you had time to go over next week's lesson plans tonight instead of tomorrow. If you don't it's no trouble, it's just that I..." Harry made himself stop talking and waited.
Malfoy was silent for a moment, watching him, before he said "All right," as casually as if there had been no pause. "I'll need to put away my gear and get my files."
He turned and headed into the castle, leaving Harry no choice but to follow him
"O'Reilly's still struggling with countercurses," Malfoy said, bracing his foot on the couch and leaning down to unbuckle his shin guard.
"Damn." Harry rubbed his fingers across his eyes. "I thought he was improving."
"Not enough." Buckles opened quickly and efficiently under Malfoy's fingers, and he pulled off the shin guard, set it on the couch, and shifted position to remove the other one. "I might back him against a garden gnome but I'd want long odds. If he can't find anyone else in his year to tutor him, he's going to have to have someone assigned to him."
Malfoy's tone was impatient, unforgiving, vaguely scornful, and Harry would have been exasperated by it if his attention hadn't been so occupied with the speed with which those long, deft hands peeled off Quidditch gear. It didn't seem fair that Draco should be so… coordinated.
"Potter," he said patiently, and Harry blinked and looked up.
"Sorry. I've just… I've had a long day. We buried Ginny today."
Malfoy's hands slowed for a moment before he pulled off his elbow guards and set them on the couch beside the rest of his protective gear; and as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, he was simply gone, distant and unreachable, closing Harry entirely out of thoughts that did not look overly happy. Harry shifted uncomfortably, wanting to say something, wanting to call him back and unsure how to do it. But just as he opened his mouth, Malfoy gave a tiny shake of his head and was there again, glancing up at Harry as he reached for the fastenings of his Quidditch robes.
"Well. I won't ask how that went," he commented dryly; and his robes slid down off his shoulders in a thick susurration of heavy silk, parting to reveal a plain white three-button shirt and black trousers, and Harry completely lost track of what Draco had just said.
"Um," he said, cursing himself and frantically racking his memory. Finally he settled on replying with, "I had dinner with Remus Lupin. That was nice. He's looking well."
Draco moved past Harry to the table and pulled a file out of a stack, apparently laying hands on the right one without so much as having to glance at the others. "And are Weasley and Granger as well as can be expected?"
Why would I ask after Granger? Draco had asked, looking as if something had died under his aristocratic nose. Even now he wasn't quite managing to keep the distaste out of his voice; but he was clearly trying, and Harry knew that the Malfoys had beautiful manners when they thought it appropriate to use them but he still felt stupidly grateful.
"I think so," he answered. "It's been damn hard for them, though – the divorce, and now this…"
Anyone else Harry knew would have said Oh, so that's why you didn't want me to ask Weasley about Granger; Malfoy only tilted his head a little, eyes sparking for just a moment with two and two coming together to make four. For some reason it frustrated Harry so badly that he could have screamed, and it was entirely possible that he needed to go to bed before he wound up regressing to the black mood-swinging pit that had been his fifteenth year.
Malfoy was tapping his thumb on the corner of the file. "You don't look well, Potter," he said bluntly. "If you've changed your mind –"
"No!" Harry answered more forcefully than he meant to; and cursed himself for blushing, and for being too tired and on edge to think, and for wanting Draco Malfoy – of all conceivable people on God's earth, Malfoy of the fake dementors and Potter Stinks! buttons – to keep him company. "No. I'm a little tired, that's all. Shall we go up to the Tower? I've just got in some excellent sherry –"
And now he was talking like a headwaiter and bribing Malfoy with alcohol. If he'd been standing next to a wall he would have beaten his head against it, compounding his mortification while doing nothing to resolve his bewilderment.
"All right," Malfoy answered, sounding as if he were holding on to his patience by the skin of his teeth; and suddenly Harry wanted to shout Damn it, Malfoy, why don't you tell me stories about the match with Ireland? I was the only bloody Seeker at Hogwarts who could ever beat you, you infuriating bastard!
Oh, God, Ginny. He was supposed to have married her and he'd left her behind in a cold grave in Ottery St. Catchpole instead, and he was not going to cry.
"After you, then," he said thinly.
By the time they reached his rooms in the Tower Harry felt a bit more under control and less like he was going to snap and shout at anyone in his path, though he still couldn't shake the lingering feeling that he ought to have gone and found the unfailingly soothing Neville instead of the unfailingly nerve-wracking Draco Malfoy. He lit the candles with a wave of his hand and rummaged on his desk for his course notes file while Malfoy settled in at the table.
"Sherry's in the drinks cupboard," he said over his shoulder.
"And you want me to get it? Really, Potter, isn't that what house elves are for?" Draco murmured, more than half his attention fixed on a set of student essays.
"House elves –" Harry began, and turned to see Dobby pouring out sherry into two glasses. "Oh. Hullo, Dobby."
"Hello, Harry Potter," Dobby said with a cheerfulness that made Malfoy's absent-minded snarking seem downright soothing. He was wearing a brightly-knit, furry tea cozy on his head that made it look as if some strange, rainbow-colored animal had taken up residence between his ears. "We thought Harry Potter would stay Out tonight. How nice that he is keeping Master Draco company instead."
"We're working," Harry yelped, and dear God, he had suddenly turned into a fifteen-year-old again, in every conceivable unpleasant way.
Dobby gave him an odd look. "Master Draco and Harry Potter must call if they is getting hungry. Winky is making jam tarts."
Even the house elves thought he was fifteen. He should have come home, gone directly to bed, and pulled the covers over his head.
"The raspberry ones?" Draco asked, looking suddenly interested. Possibly he had decided to be fifteen years old along with Harry. Harry really preferred that they both stay adults.
"Blackberry," Dobby answered apologetically. "But Winky could be making raspberry."
"No, that's all right. I'll have some of the blackberry tomorrow. Those are quite good too."
Dobby glowed with pleasure. "Dobby is telling Winky you said so, Master Draco. Good night." He snapped his fingers and disappeared with a small pop.
"Malfoy," Harry said, bemused. "Did you just have a civil conversation with a house elf?"
"I have conversations with my furniture, too, Potter, when I stub my toe on it," Malfoy answered, not looking up from the essays. "I don't know that I'd call them civil, but they certainly involve things being said. Did you tell the fourth-years that the most common way of becoming a werewolf is through a gypsy's curse?"
Harry winced and sat down, reaching for his sherry. "No, I didn't."
"I ask because it's shown up in four essays now. All, coincidentally, Gryffindors."
Harry rubbed a hand across his forehead. He didn't want to get into an argument over relative House merits tonight. He wanted to have a nice civil working session with a Draco who loved Quidditch and was reasonably polite to house elves and was patient and encouraging with the Slytherins, and didn't feel the need to close himself off behind an icy wall with "Draco Malfoy, Slytherin Extraordinaire" carved into it.
He wanted Draco to look at him, and he wondered if anyone ever got what they wanted.
"How about if we just finish up next week's lesson plan?" he said, more tersely than he meant to.
Malfoy lifted an eyebrow and gave Harry a long, cool look, and suddenly Harry wondered if anyone even knew what they wanted, or if this was another one of those things that everyone seemed to be better at than he was. "Never mind, Potter, I'm sure you'll catch Slytherin in some trivial slip-up next week or the week after, and then you'll –"
"Jesus, Malfoy, that isn't what this is about!" Harry snapped.
"Of course not. I think your lesson plan from last year will do well enough to start with, but –"
Harry shoved back away from the table and went to the sideboard to grab a bottle of firewhiskey. He was bloody well going to need something more than sherry to deal with this – with this Draco who wouldn't meet him head-on anymore, who slipped out of his grip with indifferent politeness too smooth to get a hold on, who didn't even give him the satisfaction of beating his head against the wall because there was no wall there to beat it against. He wanted the old Draco back, his Draco, the one who flared right back in his face and was spoiled and nasty and cheated at Quidditch; the one who made him stop being Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, and dragged him by the throat into a tiny universe where there was only Harry and Draco Malfoy and anger and righteousness and being alive. If he couldn't have the Malfoy who taught injured little girls to make firework roses, he'd settle for the Malfoy who called Hermione a mudblood and took House points for no reason, but by God he wanted one or the other.
"I think this is a bad time," Malfoy said dryly, and started gathering up his papers.
"Why did you come back here?" Harry asked, hating the strain in his voice.
Malfoy stood, drained his sherry, and shot Harry an irritated look. "Is this where you tell me how the lot of you got on just fine before I showed up to ruin everything?"
"No, dammit! I just wanted to know!"
"I came back for my own reasons, Potter, which I am not obliged to explain to you. And because Snape asked me to, because you couldn't handle the course load he'd given you."
"I was teaching two bloody courses, that's more than any other teacher –"
"And now you've decided to take over the Weasel's job interrogating me on top of all your other duties, have you?" Draco shot back; and there was clear anger in his voice now, and he was looking at Harry, and oh God he shouldn't need this but he did. "Do us both a favor and put away your Junior Auror kit –"
And that stung like a slap in the face. "Shut up, Malfoy! I didn't leave Auror training because I couldn't handle it, I left because –"
"Potter, am I even required for this conversation or is my role here solely to give you a warm body to shout at?"
It was true, Harry was being unfair and he knew it, and he couldn't stop because with terrifying suddenness a pit that he'd thought he left behind years ago had suddenly opened under his feet. He felt as if he'd woken up to find himself underwater and was struggling to reach the surface, and if he could just hold on a little longer…
"Look, I'm sorry, all right? But I don't know you anymore and it's making me –"
"You never did know me, Potter," Draco said flatly, and the anger in his eyes was veiled now but it was still there. "You categorized me. There's a difference. Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't believe this meeting is going to be terribly productive so I think I'll be going."
He turned away and headed for the door. One of the candles on the desk guttered and went out, the humidity was so oppressive that Harry couldn't stand the feel of his own skin, and he heard himself say, quietly, "How did this happen?"
Draco paused, hand on the doorknob. "How did what happen?"
Harry closed his eyes and raked his hands through his hair. "This. Any of it. Ginny dead. Percy gone. Ron and Hermione barely able to talk to one another. You and I tearing into each other like bloody schoolboys again. Dumbledore gone. It –" Harry's voice broke, and he bit his lip to keep it back.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this. Any of it. This isn't how things were supposed to go. This isn't who I was supposed to be. This isn't who any of us were supposed to be."
Silence for a long moment, stretching thin and glimmering in the candlelight. "It isn't what happened, you know," Draco answered finally. "It's what didn't happen. There was no glorious final battle with the Dark Lord. You didn't defeat him on the field of honor with Dumbledore at your right hand. I didn't have the chance to fight by my father's side to remake our world in safety and strength. There was no end."
Harry looked back over his shoulder at Draco.
Draco smiled wryly, not looking at Harry. "It's a bit like having the last stair not be where you thought it would be, isn't it?"
Harry gave a short, amazed laugh. "Is that… is that what you thought Voldemort would do?"
"No, Potter. It's what I thought my father would do."
"Even though he would have done it by Voldemort's side? Even though people would have been killed?"
Draco tilted his head, considering. "Well. One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, after all."
There was a moment when Harry really thought that one or the other of them had gone utterly insane. In the next moment he was fairly sure of it, because he found himself leaning against the back of a chair and howling with uncontrollable laughter. Draco watched him, one eyebrow raised in an expression of impeccably-mannered patience, and that only made Harry laugh harder until finally he didn't have enough breath to go on.
He lifted his glasses and wiped at his eyes, blinking the dazzling candlelight out of them, and Draco was still there, standing by the doorway. Harry hadn't laughed that hard in years, and he had no idea why, and no idea what had been so funny about Malfoy's comment except its utter Malfoyness. Really not that funny at all, and while something inside him had eased a bit, something else had wound itself even tighter.
"You know, I used to have this…" Harry began, then laughed again, out of embarrassment this time. "I used to think that you'd come over to our side. That something would happen and you'd see what the Death Eaters really were, and you'd come to Dumbledore, or – or to me, and… God, I don't know, I had a dozen variations on the story. Sometimes you'd take the Dark Mark and spy for us. Sometimes you'd talk your whole family into leaving Voldemort. Sometimes you'd break with your family too. Sometimes, if I was really pissed off at you that day, no one would trust you and we'd send you back to your father. But… I used to think you'd – oh, bugger, I don't know. It was a daydream." Harry made a brief, helpless gesture. "That was back when I knew what our side was."
"I'm a Malfoy, Potter," Draco answered with something like gentleness in his voice. "That's my side."
"Would you have joined Voldemort?" Harry asked. "If not for your father, would you have joined?"
"No," Draco replied. "Dark Lords are not notorious for treating their followers well, no matter what they promise or who the followers are. I have no interest in being a professional minion."
"What do you want?" Harry asked curiously.
Draco looked away, ash-colored hair drifting into his face and blocking it from Harry's view. Harry shoved his hands into his pockets and swallowed hard. "Maybe I'll tell you that someday," Malfoy said finally, reaching for the doorknob again.
"We haven't finished the lesson plan." I'm sorry. Don't go. Not now, not yet.
"It's late and my Quidditch team bloody near ran me ragged tonight." Malfoy glanced back at Harry, cool and emotionless and untouched, and it hurt. "Maybe we should meet tomorrow evening."
"All right," Harry said slowly. "Eight o'clock? That should give us some time before we have to make rounds."
Malfoy nodded briefly. "Eight o'clock. For god's sake get some sleep, Potter. You look like you haven't had any in a month."
"Good night, Draco," Harry said to the door when it closed.
