Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling, not me.

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Courting chaos, chapter three: Men exist for each other.

"Men exist for each other. Then either improve them, or put up with them." – Marcus Aurelius


She knew she could be cheerful. She used to be the queen of good cheer and common sense. Slightly forced cheer at times, she had to admit, but now she didn't remember how to do it anymore.

She remembered yesterday's conversation and how she had felt safe enough to ask questions. She had even felt that she had the right to some real answers. She had forgotten that Malfoy didn't deal in her kind of reality.

Sitting side by side on a park bench she asked him what she had wondered about from time to time.

"Don't you feel fear? Fear of losing something or even fear of being discovered?"

She couldn't allow herself to think anything else. Everyone fears something. She could see that he really thought about it. Examined everything she said from different angles, trying to find out what she really meant.

"No, Granger, but I do feel dislike a lot. Fear and hate seem like they would be too much of a bother." He looked thoughtful as he said it.

Malfoy leaned forward, like he wanted to tell her a secret that no one else should hear.

"But I still love," he whispered to her.

She left then. What could she possibly say to something like that? In her world you couldn't love and then kill indiscriminately. He looked smug when she left. As likely as not, that could have been his goal for the entire conversation.

Cheerfulness was even harder to come by when she opened up her Muggle newspaper the next morning and read about the church that had been burnt to the ground. The author of the article noted that the police didn't think that the fire had killed the people inside, but they didn't have enough evidence to make a statement about the cause of death yet. Stone didn't burn but the church still looked dead on the picture. No hope to come by there.

Well, she couldn't do cheerful before so maybe it wasn't a great loss. She was probably only being overly dramatic again. Research might help. Hell, Japanese pop would help; the only thing that could make it worse was… No, the list was still too long to contemplate. Why could it always be worse?

Being by herself, connecting scraps of information gleaned from unwilling helpers didn't take her mind off the burnt church or anything else that had happened lately. She was sliding down a slippery slope and everyone she knew was right beside her. There were no willing hands left to pull them up.

She knew that talking helped, even writing it down would probably ease the burden somewhat, but she didn't dare. She had no idea what thoughts and feelings would surface if she put a quill to the paper. Everything would be too real and too tangible to ignore. She could deal with the facts, but she was closing off her emotions. So, perversely enough, the only one who heard a fraction of her jumbled thoughts was Malfoy. In a twisted way, he helped her to clear things up. He seemed to, if not enjoy listening, at least accept his role as listener. A sentence or two was usually enough for her, though, and he would probably not listen to anything more. She used to see it as a safety vent and he saw it as an opening to inject casual cruelty and the occasional degrading comment. She just didn't think it was enough anymore. She was keeping herself together purely by will, and if she let that control go, she wouldn't be getting it back soon. What kind of life did she have when the only person she ever talked to was an enemy? Hinting at her own confusion to an enemy because telling someone who actually cared for her was too painful?

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Time passed, as it was wont to do. Somewhere babies were born, children laughed and people didn't think maudlin thoughts every waking hour of the day because they tried to hide from reality.

She worked, she argued, and she did a passing imitation of that elusive thing called living, all the time dreading each new day. Owls with messages she didn't want to answer, interrogations she didn't want to attend, and meetings she wished she had the guts to refuse to come to. In the end it all boiled down to love and she didn't think she could love humanity, or even the small part of it that had magic in its blood.

And here she was, once again sitting by his side waiting for information that could save those she still had it in her to love. She idly wondered how many hours of safety preparations he spent on each new meeting place. She knew it was impossible to Apparate inside a certain limit of his meeting point and she knew that every tracking method her friends used while she was meeting with Malfoy had failed spectacularly. Paranoia was the name of the game and he was exceptionally good at it.


He wasn't made for violence, but he was made for power. Violence could lead to power or be a side effect of power, so he made sure that he was good at it. Power at wand-point was better than no power at all, and could be intensely satisfying. Never as satisfying as this, though. All he had to do was use his mind and his experience at manipulating people to get exactly the results he was looking for. No violence, only words.

"We are alike, you and I, Granger. Not in the ways that really matter, of course, but in our strong dedication to reason. If we find something we truly value, it will be reasonable, and it will be worth it."

She couldn't say she enjoyed his little speech, and a large part of her wanted to tell him, scream at him, that they were nothing alike and never would be. A small part of her -- the one that couldn't be persuaded to shut up even after copious amounts of alcohol and was disgusted every time she tried lying to herself -- knew that he was right. Malfoy knew the extent of her crimes and her choices and exactly how she had tried to justify them. If she couldn't justify it to herself, she definitely couldn't justify it to Malfoy when it was blatantly obvious what she was doing. Playing God in a sick, little game she was co-creator in, even if it was just by agreeing to the rules. So no matter what he said, she was like him in every way that mattered.

"So what in this mess is reasonable to you, Malfoy? Keeping those I care for alive seems reasonable to me. But why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because he asked me to, right before I killed him," he answered her.

She had no idea how many people he had killed and even less of an idea of how many people who would dream of asking something like that of their killer. Only one came to mind really.

"Snape?" she asked. "Why would he ask you and why would you do it?"

"Don't you ever get tired of asking questions, Granger? You're like a bloody dog with a bone, and about as well groomed. Just leave it," he said, and turned away from her to look out through the closest window.

The insult was practically friendly by their standards and did nothing to deter her. Since he didn't walk away she decided to push. If this really was the reason behind his help she wanted to know it. It wouldn't change anything, but it would make him more human she supposed. Which, in itself, wasn't a good reason to anger him but good enough for her, here and now.

"Why?" A little louder, a little more insistent.

"He saved my life, and this is what he wanted in return: me helping you."

"But you still kill, and, from what I see, you don't seem particularly upset about it."

Now that was the understatement of the year. Malfoy upset about killing. Couldn't she have phrased that question differently? Probably she lost her senses when he told her that Snape asked him to help them. That information led to many more questions than would ever be answered and was therefore not acceptable to think about.

"Granger, it was a debt to be honored and to be paid in full. Muggles are worthless and I would prefer the magical world to be free of as many Mudbloods and blood-traitors as possible. I am not on your side," he said in a long-suffering tone of voice. "I am on my side, the pure side. By now you must have realized that purity is not only about blood but about actions and deeds, too, Granger. Debts are always to be paid in full."

This he told her calmly, like it was the simplest thing in the world and a universal truth clear for everyone to see. His manners indicated that she simply hadn't seen the light yet, fighting on in this desperate way of hers.

She couldn't even tell him to fuck off because no matter how many times she heard or read about it, she was still shocked to realize that people believed this. They felt exactly the same about her that she felt about them. Like they really had no right to live any more.

"It is not the natural order of things! It is a social construction, made by people for people to make them feel safe in their superiority. A lie that has been accepted throughout society and is seen as the truth is still a lie!" She practically spit it out. What could she believe in, if not this?

"When enough people believe in a lie, it will become the truth and be all the stronger for it."

"You're not sane, Malfoy."

She knew she shouldn't push, shouldn't even look at him in the wrong way. Whatever the wrong way was. But this was like a roadside accident: she knew it was going to be awful but couldn't stop herself.

"So I'm insane simply because I'm not on your side, the opposite side? That's not where insanity comes from, Granger. I'm still hanging in there, but I promise to tell you when I feel the madness settling in, how about that? I want you there when it does arrive, you know." He looked faintly amused when he told her this. Like losing your sanity was an event not to be missed by anyone.

"Just because we are both dedicated to reason, Granger, doesn't mean that we have the same goal in mind. Or even the same way to reach it," he said.

"I should bloody well think so, Malfoy. Means to an end isn't a safe policy," she answered. She couldn't have told him if she were talking about him or about herself. The entire conversation was bordering on bizarre but she guessed none of them talked much to anyone else.

"Shush, Granger. You think that control is the only way you are going to grasp and understand everything, that is happening to you, but let me tell you something: order and control lead to chaos sooner or later. I just decided to start with the consequences first."

He sat there, pale in the gloom that surrounded them, exuding a slightly fanatical faith in himself and everything he believed in. If it were not a scary thing, she would have laughed. There would be no redemption for Draco Malfoy. He definitely did not want it and she could not even contemplate it.

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