Chapter 25
Harry had returned to the Gryffindor common room and found his friends had regrouped by the fireplace and were waiting for him.
"Luna went back to Ravenclaw Tower," Neville told him. "But she said she would be fine with whatever we decided."
Harry nodded. He stood awkwardly at the edge of the group, unsure of what to do with himself. He felt like he would need an invitation to sit down. Ginny was still scowling.
"She also said that she doesn't like Malfoy very much, because he used to be awful to her, and when I asked her how she felt about Parkinson, she just said "worse"."
"Right", said Harry.
He didn't know what to tell them. They were all looking at him as if he had betrayed them, and he realized that that was something he had been waiting for – had been dreading for years now. He had imagined it a thousand times, what it would be like when he finally let them down. He had thought it would be over something more inevitable, that when he eventually failed to live up their expectations, it would be because his luck had finally run out and there was some miracle that he couldn't pull off. This was all just bad decisions. It was something he should have been able to avoid.
"I'm sorry about the Slytherins," he said finally. "I should have told you."
"Yes, you should have," said Ginny coolly.
His hands were curled into tight fists.
"I don't know what I was thinking," he said.
He had told Malfoy that he would try to convince them to come back, but he would just have to explain it to him later. Make him understand that he couldn't. It shouldn't even matter if he understood – he didn't owe Malfoy anything.
Hermione sighed.
"It's alright, Harry," she said. "I think we all overreacted a bit. So what do you think we should do about Azkaban?"
He looked at her, surprised.
"What?"
"Well, you were a right arsehole for not telling us that Malfoy and Parkinson would be there, but we all heard Malfoy's story, and Hermione thinks he's right that we have to do something about it," said Ginny.
The tight grip on Harry's lungs loosened.
"I reckon we should just do it without the Slytherins. Seems the simplest solution, doesn't it?" said Ron.
"We can't," said Hermione sounding reluctant at having to argue his part. "Malfoy is the only one who has been to Azkaban. We'll need him."
"But there's no need for Parkinson to be there."
"Yeah, but we can't really tell him not to bring her, can we? I mean, there's already six of us and just two of them, so it wouldn't be fair," said Neville.
"Why should we be fair?"
"Because we'll have to cooperate, right? That was your idea too, wasn't it, Harry?"
"Well – yes," he said, though he wasn't sure he had really had an idea.
"So it probably won't help the cooperation if we tell him not to bring Parkinson because we don't like her."
Considering how much Hermione still hated Malfoy and how much Ginny loathed Parkinson, any sort of cooperation seemed pretty far out of reach no matter what they did.
"But things didn't work out very smoothly today either, did they?" said Ginny, echoing his thoughts.
"Well, to be fair it wasn't actually the Slytherins who started the fight today," said Hermione.
Ginny shot her an angry look.
"I mean, it wasn't just them," she added.
"I talked to Malfoy after you had all left," said Harry. "And it didn't sound like he had told Parkinson what we'd be meeting about or who were coming or anything, so I suppose she wasn't prepared for it. I think Malfoy really wants to cooperate, so he'll probably tell her to… you know, he'll probably talk to her if we ask him to."
"Please do."
"Look, shouldn't we at least talk about the possibility that he might be lying to us?" said Ron. "How do we even know that he went to Azkaban?"
"I really don't think he is-" Harry began.
"Why not? From my experience he's more likely to be lying than telling the truth."
"Why would he lie about this?"
"Wow, I don't know, maybe because his father is in Azkaban and he wants to help him break out? Maybe he's trying to get revenge by tricking you into a life-threatening situation and then stabbing you in the back once you trust him? I can think of a hundred reasons why Malfoy would lie to us."
Harry felt frustration stirring in him. Anyone with half a brain who had heard Malfoy talk about Azkaban the way he had would know he was telling the truth. If the others refused to work with him, that was their decision, and he shouldn't have tried to trick them into anything, but Malfoy wasn't lying.
"You heard what he said about his father; he practically considers him dead. He didn't even want to go in the first place, he told me that before the holidays. Do you think he has been plotting this since before Christmas?"
"Why not? Why else would he tell you something like that?"
Harry flinched. But Ron and Hermione already knew, the others would find out sooner or later.
"Because he and I had been talking a bit. I told you that too, remember?"
"Yeah. As far as I remember, that was right after you had been beating him up in some classroom, and you also said that you would never trust him again. Have you been confunded?"
"No, people who have been confunded have a hard time keeping track of time and will often have difficulties with complex conversations," said Hermione, reflexively quoting one of their charms books.
"I know, it was a rhetorical question," said Ron. "Though Harry does seem to have a hard time keeping track of some very simple aspects of this conversation."
"Don't be a git, Ron," said Neville.
"Look, I saw the letter Malfoy's mother had sent him where she said they were going to Azkaban. And he really didn't want to go, he got himself wasted on firewhisky because of it."
"Sorry, what?" asked Ginny. "When did this happen?"
"Before the holidays, like I said."
He didn't want to think about that night. They were all giving him strange looks now and he could feel himself getting angry even though he really shouldn't.
"You all know he came back late after the holidays," he continued. "Because he got out of reach of the patronus while he was there. I talked to him right when he came back, and he was acting… strange, which was why we got in a fight."
"But-"
"Ron, I think Harry is right," said Hermione. "I don't think Malfoy is lying about having been to Azkaban. I'm not so sure about whether he wants it destroyed or if he wants to free his father or something else – it is a possibility, Harry," she said, eyeing him before he could speak. "But no matter what his intentions are, I think we can agree that Azkaban is something we should do something about. We'll have to do some research, check up on some of the things he said and find out the best course of action, which might be not to go there at all. And if we do have to and we still don't trust him, then we just won't take him with us. It's not like he'll be able to secretly turn the plans into something else if we're all working together."
Ron shuddered.
"Does it really have to be teamwork with the Slytherins?"
"I think it does?" said Hermione.
She looked at Neville and Ginny who half shrugged half nodded. Then she turned to Harry.
"Okay," he said. "So we're still doing it."