Disclaimer: Harry Potter and related titles belong to JK Rowling and her associates. The title, Just a Toy, is a song from Barenaked Ladies on their album Born on a Pirate Ship.
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She found the crane on her pillow the next Saturday after breakfast. It was a delicate origami crane made up of the yellowing parchment everyone used to write on. Hannah snatched the little animal off her bed before Susan and Megan could see it. She cradled it in her cupped hand, while drawing the curtains around her bed.
She carefully unfolded the crane as Susan and Megan put on more layers for the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Now the thought of watching the match was the last thing on Hannah's mind. She willed her fingers to stop trembling as she opened the note.
Inside was one simple sentence:
Meet me in the Prefect's Bathroom during the Quidditch match.
She crinkled up the paper and pushed it under her pillow, a blush creeping across her cheeks. She forced her face down into her pillow, closing her eyes tightly and trying not to hyperventilate. Two freak meetings with Draco Malfoy had been horrible enough but now he purposely wanted to see her? Hannah decided that he must be doing this to toy with her, like some sick cat and mouse game.
"Hannah?" Susan's soft voice barely carried through the heavy drapes around Hannah's bed. "Are you ready?"
Hannah bolted upright, her hands nervously straightening out her hair. "Uh, I don't think I'm going," she said, searching her mind for a good excuse not to join her friends at the Quidditch match. "I don't feel well," she finished lamely.
A moment of silence followed. Hannah imagined Susan and Megan gesticulating an argument on whether or not they should leave her there alone. "Okay, we'll see you at dinner then," Susan finally replied, though Hannah felt the argument hadn't ended yet and Susan was just being more vocal. She listened as the two girls walked out of the room, closing the round wooden door behind them.
She waited ten minutes more before poking her head out from the curtains, and glancing around to make sure Eloise and Sally-Ann had also left. Seeing she was alone, Hannah dove back for the parchment she'd hidden under her pillow. She scanned the words once again, hoping they had rearranged themselves into something that didn't put her in this position, but the content stayed steadfast. If it weren't for what Hannah had overheard earlier that month, she wouldn't have considered actually going. But now her curiosity would not let her ignore the call.
As she walked down the deserted halls to the Prefect's bathroom, the nursery rhyme about curiosity killing the cat flashed into her mind. She immediately brushed it off. If this was a game of cat and mouse, Hannah was certainly not the cat. There were no such ill omens about curiosity and mice.
She whispered the password and walked into the Prefect's bathroom. The depressed bathtub was empty and Draco sat on the edge with one of his legs swinging over into the tub while the other was bent and supporting his arm. He twirled his wand casually between his fingers. He looked up at Hannah as she entered and the feeling she had in the Great Hall washed over her again. The feeling that he knew exactly what she had gone through.
Quickly, he turned his attention back to his wand. Hannah stood in the doorway, very confused. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do now that she was here. Her hands absently fiddled with her robe, smoothing out the already ironed black clothe.
"Sit down," Draco said. It was soft and not a question, but a command. She moved into the room and sat on the opposite edge of the tub, her hands under her thighs. She folded into herself, trying to make herself smaller and, hopefully, invisible.
The second hand on Hannah's watch ticked away slowly, each second dragging out longer than the next. And still they sat in silence, both mesmerized by the lazy twirling of Draco's wand between his thin fingers.
"Malfoy, why did—" Hannah started, but Draco interrupted her before she could even finish the thought.
"Abbott, what's it like to lose your mother?" he asked. The words were steady and unapologetic. He turned his steel colored gaze from his wand and finally looked at Hannah. The force of his steady stare knocked the wind out of Hannah's chest. She sat in silence for a while, caught in his strong and unassuming look, trying to catch her breath.
The words formed thick and heavy on her tongue like bullets forced down her throat. "Well," she started, her voice shaky and uneven, showing none of the composure Draco had. No words could describe how it felt to lose the woman that gave life to you, who nurtured you, and protected you through everything. She felt the familiar burning at the back of her throat that foreshadowed that tears were on their way, again. She pushed her fist into her eye, trying to keep the tears from falling in front of Draco.
She cleared her throat and started again. "It's like having your heart cut in two, like watching the world crumble, like seeing the universe fail and not being able to do a thing about it. It's the worst thing I've ever felt in my entire life." It was quiet and raspy, but it was the best Hannah could do.
Sometime while Hannah was talking, Draco looked at her. When she felt she had won against the flood of tears, she looked at him and met his eyes. He didn't say anything: he didn't have to. In his cold gray eyes was the sincere apology Hannah had longed for in the days after her mother had died. He did know and he was sorry. It was shocking for Hannah to see such kindness in a face that was always marred with cruelty and wore a mask of disdain.
He nodded curtly, and then looked back at his twirling wand. "That's what I thought," he said in a low voice. Another pause followed. They both followed the slow end over end turning of his wand. Draco took a deep breath, as if to steady him, and then said, "If I don't do what he says, he'll kill my mother too." Their eyes met again across the empty bathtub. Hannah didn't need to ask who he was. Whenever the subject of death came up, everyone knew who was behind it in these dark days.
"Will you help me?" he croaked, taking Hannah by surprise. She recognized the sound of trying to hold back the tears and it startled her to hear it from Draco. She looked at him carefully, weighing exactly what he had just said in her head. "For my mother?" he added and all of Hannah's careful calculations were unnecessary.
"Of course I'll help you," she said, giving him a reassuring half smile.