"Malfoy..." Potter drawled out, the precisely flawed imitation of his own voice instantly putting Draco Malfoy on edge. "Do you remember the third person Tom Riddle asked you to kill?"

Draco Malfoy swallowed. Of course he remembered. He remembered everyone that he killed. Absolutely, positively, everyone. He had given up trying to remember all the people he'd ordered to be killed, of course. For one thing, there were entirely too many. And it always seemed so impersonal, if you didn't see someone's life leaking out of them like blood pouring out of a slit neck. "Yes," he said, filtering through his memories until he brought the person to the fore. Arabella Figg was it? One of the members of the Order - and one of the better deaths, he thought wryly. At least he could pretend he was executing a war criminal - or at least a captured warrior. Not mindlessly slaughtering those too young to even hope for a miracle. The weight of his thoughts turned Draco's sudden smile cruel and cold, as he said tonelessly, "Arabella Figg, it was. A good friend of yours, she was?"

Harry Potter mindlessly fiddled with his hands, Ron Weasley shouted imprecations and curses at Malfoy, and Granger continued to read - or at least pretended to. Because Draco Malfoy recognized the stillness of her hands, it was the same stillness his had when he was eavesdropping, and only pretending to shut the entire world out.

"No, not really." Harry Potter said, seeming uncomfortable. "She... watched over me, when I was a kid." Draco looked at Potter levelly, somehow sensing in Poter's quiescence, more to say and not less. "She let me stay there, let me rot in a room no bigger than a closet, let me starve. I sometimes think I'd have preferred Tom Riddle to my relatives."

"But... she wasn't your relative, was she?" Draco Malfoy asked.

"No. But really, this is beside the point. I want to know what was running through your mind when you killed her." And Potter eyed Malfoy intently, his green eyes hard as emeralds, and just as bright.

"I was afraid, of course. Who wouldn't be? Riddle's not nicer to his ... minions, you know." Potter responded with a firm nod, his mouth quirking in what surely was a wince.

"I did what had to be done. If I didn't, we'd have died..." Draco Malfoy said, the words coming out of his mouth like purging a poison.

Harry Potter started to speak before he had half collected his thoughts, "But - when you stood there, in front of the Dark Lord, you looked-"

Draco Malfoy was on his feet in the blink of an eye, his wand in his hand pointed directly at - "Who are you? Potter wasn't there." Draco growled, his mental shields shuttering his mind from view. Draco only distantly registered the Weasel reaching under the table; Granger raising her wand from the table. They were irrelevant.

[a/n: there you go!

Please read and review, for me?

Tell me what you think Draco's major malfunction is... have you figured it out?

Just a fun little twist from your devious author.]