So uh, hi. It's been a while. It's probably going to be a while after this too, tbh, but I wanted to show that this isn't actually abandoned! If you're still here, thank you for being so patient with me!
This chapter and the next were originally one chapter, so I'm posting them both together. o7
Memento Vivere
Chapter XIV / Of Lessons and Labels
"So what were you up to during the holiday?" Potter asked as soon as Draco stepped into their classroom on Saturday. "You never said."
Draco frowned at him, both for getting there first (not that it had been difficult for him, as the Slytherin Quidditch practice that morning had run long) and for being so impatient that he couldn't even wait for Draco to sit down. And for the question itself, a bit. He hadn't actually been meaning to tell Potter much about his holiday. He'd only made the offer in the first place to encourage Potter to be open and honest, and then he had purposefully changed the topic before Potter realized he was the only one actually sharing anything.
Draco had a feeling that Potter was not going to let him get away with that again. He supposed it didn't actually matter either. It wasn't as if he'd been up to anything illicit. He would have had to bring some of it up himself eventually today anyway. It just felt very...odd to be discussing his holiday with Potter of all people.
"I spent some of it visiting my cousins," Draco said finally as he closed the door. "They're incredibly fond of Christmas in that house. Trees everywhere. I couldn't stay there, but I visited often enough. And I visited a few of my friends."
He walked over and took a seat on a desk a couple rows in front of where Potter was sitting. "And my father threw his annual Yule Ball. The Minister came, of course, and he was positively embarrassing by the end of it. I don't know why he continues to attend them. The man can hardly hold his liquor, and Father only invites him to keep up appearances and gather material to blackmail him with later."
Potter twisted his mouth like he wasn't sure if he should laugh or be offended. Draco went on before he had a chance to decide.
"And I spent some of it brushing up on what I wanted to teach you."
Potter frowned at him. "I thought you knew what you were doing."
"It's been years since I had to learn it, Potter," Draco said, "and it's not exactly something we pull out at parties. Of course I know what I'm doing, but I had to make sure I could teach it properly. It could be extremely dangerous for both of us if I didn't."
As he'd hoped, the mention of danger caught Potter's attention immediately. "What's so dangerous about it?" Potter asked while he shifted in his seat so he was sitting up straighter. Draco wondered if he even realized he was doing it.
But getting Potter to pay attention was the only reason he'd mentioned it. He wasn't planning on telling Potter he could easily destroy himself if he did something wrong, since that would almost guarantee that he would. Draco did not particularly relish the idea of having to deal with the fallout of accidentally killing the Boy-Who-Lived in the middle of Hogwarts.
"I'll tell you once you've mastered it," Draco said. "If you do exactly what I say, you shouldn't have any trouble."
Potter's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Perhaps he was wondering if Draco was about to start teaching him Dark Arts, no matter what he had said when they'd made their deal. But it seemed that Potter's desire to learn something forbidden and dangerous was stronger than his distrust of Draco, because eventually his head jerked in a stiff nod.
"Good. I'll need you to tell me a few things before we get started as well," Draco said as he shifted to get more comfortable with his legs folded up on the desk. "No doubt I could make some reasonable assumptions, but it would be safer for everyone not to."
"All right..." Potter said, staring at him like he thought Draco might suddenly burst into flame.
"I want you to tell me how you think about your magic."
Predictably, Potter blinked unintelligently at him...and then he reached a hand up to rub at his scar. Draco tried not to watch it too intently. He thought Potter's scar had been irritating him more than usual this week—but it had also seemed to be bothering him more often this year than it had last year. He did wonder sometimes what it was about an old scar that could be so irritating or cause Potter to fall over screaming in hallways.
"I don't know what you mean," Potter said, bringing Draco's attention back to the whole reason they were here. "How I think about my magic? It's...magic. How else am I supposed to think about it?"
Draco wagged a finger at him. "We'll be getting to that, but what I care about is where you're starting from. You must think more than that. I know you think more than that. You gave me that big speech about how magic shouldn't be restricted. Well, what about your magic? Just...think about it, and say whatever comes to mind."
Potter frowned at him and rubbed at his scar again, but then he sighed and closed his eyes to do as he was told.
"Well, it's magic," he said stupidly. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and scrunched his nose up in thought. "I'm always amazed by what it can do—what I can do, but especially the professors and other students like Hermione. Hermione can do everything, she's really talented—"
"Fascinating though I'm sure it is that a Mu—Muggleborn actually has a modicum of talent," Draco interrupted, "I don't care what you think about her magic. Just yours."
Potter scowled up at him, but Draco knew it would have been far more heated if he hadn't caught himself before he offended Potter's sensibilities.
"I guess...sometimes I feel like it doesn't want to do what I want it to right away. I mean, I know it's that way for most of us and I'm not expecting to pick up on everything right away, but then I'll look at someone like Hermione...or you," Potter added with a slight face, and Draco felt momentarily thrilled that Potter thought that of him at all, "and you pick up on spells and classwork so quickly and...I wonder why I can't do that. Why I have to coax my magic even more to get a worse result."
"Do you trust it to be there for you?" Draco asked. If Potter started out by assuming he wasn't going to do well and believing his magic wasn't going to work right away, then of course he wasn't going to catch on as quickly.
Potter, however, did not seem to have picked up on this, as he gave Draco a surly look. "'Course I do. I have to, don't I? When you're out there fighting for your life, you don't have much time to sit around and wonder if your spell's going to work right the first time. You just do it."
"I'm not counting that," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "I doubt you've tried anything for the very first time while facing the Dark Lord or whatever else has tried to kill you, have you? Obviously you'd trust spells you've practiced before."
"Then I don't know what you're getting at here," Potter grumbled, rubbing at his scar for a third time. "I trust it to work when I need it to."
He opened his mouth like he might say something else, but then shut his mouth again and looked away without saying anything.
Draco was not going to let him keep secrets that easily. "You should trust it all the time. What were you going to say?"
Potter scowled at him and shook his head. "I was just thinking about the Patronus...but there's more to it than just that. It's not important."
"I think I'll be the one deciding what's important or not," Draco said. He was sure he sounded as distracted as he felt. He hadn't forgotten that Potter could supposedly cast a Patronus—a full, corporeal Patronus—nor did he have any trouble believing it given what Potter had attacked him with during a Quidditch match in third year. But it didn't have quite as much of an impact hearing his father mention it as it did listening to Potter offhandedly mention it like he did it every day, right here in front of him in their private classroom where they would be studying magic.
Draco made a mental note to casually wonder aloud if Potter might be willing to teach someone that particular spell. No reason Draco had to be the only one teaching a bit of magic here.
Potter was eying him warily, but he hadn't said anything else. Draco leaned forward with his chin in his hand, tapping his finger on his cheek while he studied the problem.
He'd had quite a lot of time to think about this since he'd offered to give Potter lessons, and he'd thought this was the key. That Potter didn't perform as well in his classes as either he or Draco thought he ought to because he didn't fully believe in himself or his magic, no matter what he said. Because frankly—though he was never going to admit this to Potter—Draco thought Potter had the potential to do as well as he did. He constantly showed it in the stunts he seemed to pull every year, and Draco had seen it in their study sessions. He wasn't an idiot and he wasn't talentless, no matter what Professor Snape liked to say.
But he didn't do that well, and that was puzzling. And unfortunately, Draco didn't know quite enough about him to make any real guesses. His most solid guess was that it had something to do with the Muggles he lived with during the summer. Muggles would never have been able to adequately understand what Potter had gone through when he was small, when he was growing into his magic, and so Potter wouldn't have understood either. His accidental magic would have frightened them, and that was hardly the appropriate environment to embrace what he could do.
Learning to calm and take control of one's wandless magic was a skill that was essential to learn as soon as that magic began to present itself. Not only would that ensure the child wouldn't accidentally hurt himself or the people around him when his childish emotions flared out of control, it also guaranteed a natural affinity with his own magic that would be difficult to learn once that wizard began using a wand.
It was why an awful lot of Mudbloods could never hope to reach the same heights as someone born into their world. They had no one around them that could teach them to live with their magic and that it wasn't a frightening thing, and their magic suffered for it. There were always exceptions—even Draco had to grudgingly admit Granger was a talented witch—and of course, even proper magical training couldn't make up for a lack of power or ability, though it did keep Gregory and Vincent's stupidity from causing any real accidents. But the overall trend was unmistakable and a very well accepted theory within the right circles.
By this time, Draco had been quiet for several minutes, and Potter was beginning to look very impatient. But thankfully, it seemed he could count on Potter's limited intelligence today. He finally seemed to decide that Draco was waiting for him to be the one to say something, and he let out a heavy breath and looked away.
"You wanted to know how I think about it..." Potter thought about this for a long moment, shifting uncomfortably in the seat. "Well, I know I can do really amazing things sometimes, like anyone else. Trust me, no one is happier than I am any time I produce a Patronus.
"But sometimes...sometimes it'll get out of control and...well, when I was little, I was kind of afraid of it. Not at what it could do, because it always helped me out but"—he smiled bitterly and Draco leaned forward, intrigued in spite of himself—"my relatives really hate anything having to do with magic at all. They don't even like hearing the word magic. So I was more afraid that I'd make something weird happen again and get punished for it than I was about what I made happen."
"When was the last time you lost control of it?" Draco asked. He was somewhat surprised that Potter would still be so hung up about childhood bursts of temper, but it did fit with what he'd been assuming the problem was.
Potter gave him his own look of surprise. "When I was thirteen. I blew up my aunt."
Ah. He had forgotten about that. But now that he thought about it, he did remember his father saying something about Harry Potter never getting what he deserved and how Fudge was soft on him.
Draco was still surprised it was so late, though. By then, Potter would have had two whole years of practice at controlling his magic, and his uncontrolled wandless magic should have died down after using a wand to channel it for that long, since he didn't have any training in using it otherwise. Either Potter was secretly more powerful than he'd thought, or there was something else going on here.
Or both. There was no reason it couldn't be both.
"When you say 'blew up'..."
"She turned into a kind of human balloon," Potter said with a look like he wasn't sure if it was all right to find it funny. "She's fine now. The Ministry sorted her out."
Draco, on the other hand, had no problem smirking at the image that presented. "What did she do that made you go and do something like that?"
"Malfoy, I'm not telling you my life's story just to learn a bit of magic."
"You're learning it right now," Draco said, sniffing lightly. If Potter would just cooperate, this would be easier on both of them. "In any case, I need to know that kind of thing to teach you properly. Normally, your parents would be the ones teaching you, and they would already know, but seeing as you haven't got any—"
"I blew up Aunt Marge because she insulted my parents," Potter snapped. He was halfway out of his seat with his wand in his hand, and Draco very quickly waved his own hands in surrender. Potter sat back down after a few moments, but he went on scowling and his wand remained in his hand.
"She doesn't know what really happened to them or what they were," Potter said with a pointed glance at Draco. "My aunt and uncle have told everyone they died in a car crash. 'Course Aunt Marge just thinks that's a great excuse to insult them...she liked them as much as my relatives did..."
Draco tried very hard not to gape at him, and he was quite proud of himself for managing to keep his mouth shut. A car crash? He didn't think much of the Potters himself, but even he thought that was insulting.
"Right, so she deserved that...and you don't feel guilty about it...?" Draco asked, but Potter snorted and shook his head almost before he was done speaking. Well, he hadn't really thought that would be the case, as Potter had never shown any particular guilt in attacking anyone else who offended him, but it was good to know for certain that he wasn't completely hopeless. Still, that wasn't quite what Draco was looking for, so he moved on. "What about the other times? There had to have been some. Everyone has bouts of accidental magic before we're old enough for school."
Potter gave him a very reluctant look—clearly, he still wasn't fond of "telling his whole life's story", as he'd put it—but it didn't stop him from answering this time.
"I set a python on my cousin once, at the zoo. A couple months before first year. I was talking to it—I didn't know I was a Parselmouth then, I just thought it was a brilliant trick"—and like clockwork, Potter raised a hand to rub at his scar again—"and he noticed and shoved me out of the way. He always has to be the center of attention; he can't stand it if I've got something he can't have. So I made the glass disappear and it escaped. It didn't really go after him, but everyone thought it would."
"Sounds like he deserved it, too," Draco said, trying not to laugh.
"Yeah, he did," Potter agreed, and after a couple seconds of eyeing Draco, his mouth twitched like he might laugh too. Draco had the distinct impression that this was because Potter was laughing at him and not his cousin.
"What else?" Draco asked quickly, before Potter could actually start laughing. "That can't have been the first time. Not when you were ten."
Potter shook his head and gazed thoughtfully at the wall. "There was one time when Dudley and his stupid friends were chasing me, and I think I levitated myself up on top of a wall. And one time, my aunt was trying to force this horrid orange sweater on me, and I shank it so it wouldn't fit. And one time—my aunt really hates my hair, she thinks it's awful because it's impossible to get it to lay flat—one time she cut it so short she nearly shaved my head, except for a bit at the front to hide my scar, and I grew it back overnight."
Draco couldn't help it this time; he started laughing at the absolutely absurd picture that made. "Well, no wonder your magic acted out against that."
Potter scowled and rubbed his scar again. "Yeah, it was real funny, Malfoy."
Draco smiled and went back to tapping his finger against his cheek. "Well, like you said, it doesn't seem like you're afraid of it, or guilty about lashing out at anyone—but of course, you wouldn't be, not when you like to lash out at anyone who annoys you..."
Potter's knuckles turned white with the force with which he was pressing them against his scar, and the look in his eyes likely would have cowed most of the younger students. Draco, however, was becoming used to being on the receiving end of that glare, and he pointedly ignored it. He's only been musing aloud, and it wasn't as if what he'd said was untrue.
It seemed as though his initial assessment may have been right. Perhaps it was merely inexperience and poor training at a young age after all. He doubted very much that Potter was subconsciously afraid of his magic in any way, and he wasn't afraid of hurting anyone with it either. It was clear that even when he was upset, his magic didn't automatically hurt anyone.
And as Draco had thought, it sounded as though these Muggles were exactly the sort who would have been frightened by his accidental magic. Potter was lucky that didn't seem to have rubbed off on him...
Draco's finger paused and he narrowed his eyes at Potter, turning his earlier words over in his head. That was an idea...one that Potter had volunteered himself. And not only his relatives, but perhaps the actions of the Ministry as well...though it seemed impossible for risk-taking, rule-breaking Harry Potter to be affected by that kind of thing so deeply...
"What?" Potter ground out once Draco had been staring at him for several minutes.
"What kinds of punishments?"
"What?" Potter said again, bewildered.
"You said you were afraid you might 'make something weird happen' and be punished for it," Draco said. "What sort of punishments?"
Potter froze, his fist still firmly pressed against his forehead, and stared at him—apparently, he hadn't thought Draco would be paying such close attention to his remarks.
Then he pursed his lips, tightened his grip on his wand, and said, "I'm not going to talk about that," and Draco knew there would be no point in pursuing that line of questioning any further.
That was fine. Draco thought he had enough information to go on now. He probably hadn't even needed Potter to tell him as much as he had. It really did sound like Potter just needed the proper training, and he wouldn't need to worry about any Gryffindorish hang-ups in particular.
Draco laced his fingers together and stretched his arms out, first in front and then over his head. As he brought them back down he said, "Well, I appreciate how open you've been with me, Potter. That makes my job much easier. And if it makes you feel better, I almost threw my mother through a window when I was six because she wouldn't let me stay up as late as I wanted, and I levitated myself onto the roof more than once. The last time, my father said I would have to get myself down, and I was up there most of the day before my mother took pity on me."
Potter went on staring at him. For a brief second, Draco thought he saw...something behind his eyes, but he couldn't say what. But then Potter shook his head, his mouth twitching like he was trying not to grin, and Draco forgot about it.
"That's got to be the most spoiled thing I've ever heard you say. And that's including bullying your father into buying you a broom a year early."
Draco was momentarily surprised that Potter even remembered that conversation. Then he sniffed and said, "I don't want to hear that from someone who actually got a broom a year early."
Potter chuckled at that, though it was weak and half-hearted. Eventually he said, "No offense, Malfoy, but if you've got what you need, can we talk about something else now? I've got a lot of homework that's piled up over the last week-"
"What exactly was keeping you from doing it already?" Draco asked, curious about that, but even more curious about Potter's eagerness to move on to something else. They hadn't even gotten to any actual exercises yet.
"Snape and...other things. I don't have a lot of time to do much those nights."
Draco frowned at him. Potter had been very evasive about those "other things" on Tuesday, as well. Draco was burning with curiosity to know what these secret "other things" were, because it couldn't possibly be anything related to the vampires or Potter would tell him about it. Probably. But Potter seemed reluctant to even mention there were "other things" in the first place, so other than following him in secret some night, Draco doubted he would be getting any answers any time soon.
He also didn't see why his secret meetings with Snape and his secret "other things" would prevent him from completing most of his homework. Curfew was at nine, so Potter couldn't possibly be doing anything after that, which gave him a whole three hours to work on his homework before midnight. And that was assuming Potter had any interest in going to bed at a reasonable hour.
"We really should keep going..." Draco said slowly.
"If we keep going, I'm going to end up cursing you in Parseltongue again," Potter muttered.
Well, if he had been hoping that would discourage Draco at all, he was mistaken. Draco immediately leaned forward, eyeing him with interest. Potter's hand had yet to leave his scar since he'd started rubbing at it several minutes ago and his other hand was still clenched tightly around his wand. Clearly, that Parseltongue spell and this behavior had something to do with each other, but Draco could not imagine what. Perhaps what it did show, however, was that the first time hadn't been a fluke after all and Potter was hiding a darker secret than he'd guessed so far.
Draco did not, however, have any interest in actually letting Potter try to curse him again. He allowed himself a casual shrug and agree that they could move on to something else. He had actually come to appreciate having someone to do some of his homework with who could offer a new perspective on some subjects. Not that he needed Potter's help in any subject, despite what he liked to think, but Draco did appreciate it nonetheless.
He was not going to waste the opportunity to teach Potter something, however, and he didn't have all that much homework to do himself, so perhaps he would spend some time giving him a history lesson instead. There were quite a lot of stories of famous purebloods and their heroic or not-so-heroic deeds that he had heard growing up, and he doubted many of them would ever come up in History of Magic. Perhaps Potter could even find some inspiration for his name in them somewhere.
The biggest problem with picked a pseudonym, Harry decided, was that while he knew he wanted his name to mean something, he wasn't sure exactly what.
He knew he wanted it to be something unusual and obscure, while still sounding like a name. That didn't actually narrow it down a lot, because as he looked through books of Hogwarts alumni and pureblood family trees, he found that an awful lot of wizard families named their children things that, while they did still sound like names, were obviously inspired by something other than a beloved relative.
The Blacks, for instance, had a clear bias toward names of stars and constellations that went back generations. Not all of the Blacks were named this way, but the exceptions were rare enough that Harry thought he could count them on one hand. This resulted in perfectly fine, if still clearly wizard, names like Sirius and Cassiopeia, but also in names that made Harry feel very sorry for the wizards who had been saddled with them, such as Fornax and Scutum.
They did inspire him to pull out a star chart and write down a few of his own—
Polaris, Ophiuchus, Antares
—which weren't terrible and had meanings he could live with, but for the most part, they were not a great source of inspiration. And the more he thought about it, the less he thought he would want to associate himself with a family like the Blacks in any significant fashion. He loved Sirius, he really did, but Sirius was definitely an exception in that family.
Most other families weren't much better. Rather than star names, they might pick obscure or not so obscure plants, or various gems and minerals, or obscure mythological figures, or names which always started with the same letter, or names which only seemed to go together because they sounded pretentious. There were, of course, many families that didn't seem to have any sort theme at all, other than the occasional shared name between relatives, but more of those families also had names which weren't very unusual and wouldn't have been odd to hear in the Muggle world either.
So Harry abandoned that idea for a while.
He broke down and tried the same thing Voldemort had done to come up with his name, but Harry thought that Tom Riddle had been extremely lucky to have a name that actually yielded something that made sense and sounded appropriately menacing. When he tried it with his own name, even using the whole thing, he didn't come up with much of anything.
He very quickly scrapped that idea. A large part of him was very glad it hadn't worked out. It was one less thing he would have in common with Voldemort.
So he took to skimming through actual naming books and his history texts for anything that might sound decent, as he had done when he'd been looking for a name for Hedwig. At least with this method, he could also study for History of Magic, as skimming through family trees didn't leave a lot of time for studying anything. The problem with this was that he ran across a lot more names that didn't sound very unusual, and when he found one that wasn't half bad, it didn't mean anything he really cared for.
He still wasn't sure what he wanted his name to mean, but he knew very well what he didn't want when he found it.
"Now," Draco said, leaning back against a desk in the front of the classroom, "close your eyes, Potter. This'll be a lot easier if you aren't distracted by anything."
Potter shot him a dark look and rubbed his forehead in a gesture Draco was starting to think might only be a nervous gesture, but he didn't take as long to obey the command as Draco thought he might have. Maybe he actually trusted Draco enough to feel comfortable being alone with him with his eyes closed.
Draco wasn't sure he should feel quite so thrilled about that idea. This was still Harry Potter, sworn enemy of the Dark Lord and purebloods alike, after all. But it was still a nice feeling, and he let himself acknowledge that for a moment before tucking the feeling away.
"Magic is everywhere," Draco said, briefly closing his own eyes to more easily recall the lecture his mother had given him when he had first learned this. "It's in the air that we breathe and the land we live on, riding the wind through the stars and dancing on the waves of the sea. Our ancestors knew that, but most wizards nowadays have chosen to forget it. We can't really forget it, though. The other magical races haven't."
"Did you say," Potter said quietly, opening his eyes to stare at him, "'riding the wind'...?"
"Through the stars, yes, Potter, do keep up," Draco said, but he couldn't make it sound as scathingly sarcastic as he would have liked. The look on Potter's face was more startled than he would have expected. He'd expected something more like blank incomprehension. Draco didn't think Potter had come across much about the Ancient Ways in his research, but he wouldn't have thought that particular phrase would have meant anything otherwise.
"Why did you pick up on that particular phrase?"
Potter shook his head slowly, his eyes glazed over like they usually were when he was thinking especially hard. "It's the title of a book I found. I thought it might be about Quidditch when I picked it up."
"But it wasn't," Draco continued for him, and Potter nodded. "Was it about magic? Do you already know this stuff? We could just skip a few steps."
"I don't know, I haven't looked at it in months," Potter said with a slight frown. "I almost forgot I even had it." His hand rose in its predictable path to scratch at his scar. He had been doing that more and more often the last couple weeks. It seemed to bother him most often on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days after his mysterious lessons with Snape.
"Maybe you should look at it again," Draco said. He hesitated, and then added, because he was intrigued in spite of himself, "You could bring it next time and we'll both look at it."
"I'll look at it first and if it looks like it has anything to do with this, I'll bring it, all right?" Potter said. And then before Draco could actually agree, he gave Draco a mild look and went on, "Speaking of, you were busy giving me a speech, weren't you?"
Draco scowled at him and for a moment, he seriously reconsidered teaching Potter anything at all. But he'd committed himself to this far too much already to back out now, and besides, he wanted to see what Potter might become once he had proper control over his magic and a good foundation in what the Ministry had long since designated as "Dark magic". He wanted to see what Dumbledore would do.
So he scowled and crossed his arms and said, "Yes, I was. Shut your eyes, Potter, and pay attention."
Potter sighed heavily and did as he was told, although he still had his fingers glued to his forehead. Draco toyed with the idea of casting a charm to keep them stuck there, whether Potter wanted them there or not.
"And relax," he said instead. "That's important. You have to be relaxed for this to work."
"For what to work? You haven't told me anything yet."
"Maybe if you weren't so impatient we'd have gotten to it already," Draco sneered back. "You're not a stupid Gryffindor in this classroom, Potter, you're my student. So relax. You can't do it holding your head like that."
Potter gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders, and Draco casually reached for his wand in case Potter decided to hex him. So far, they'd been doing rather well in that department, but Potter seemed to be more restless and irritable lately so maybe this would be the last straw.
But then he dropped his hand to his lap and took in a deep breath in a feeble attempt to actually follow Draco's directions. "All right, fine. Maybe it'll even help..."
Of course, Draco had no idea what Potter could be babbling about now, and he didn't really care. At least Potter had decided to be cooperative; that was all that really mattered right now.
"Right," Draco said, taking a deep breath himself to regain his train of thought. "Magic is everywhere, in everything we do. It's what definitively sets us apart from Muggles, more than culture or even blood. Well, it's in our blood, really. Even Mud—Muggleborns could learn the culture, if they really wanted and tried hard enough, and they could marry into a good family if that family lost their collective minds, but they wouldn't be anywhere without the magic. They aren't much better than Muggles, but they're still set apart—"
"Malfoy, if this is just a lecture on blood purity, I'm leaving," Potter said, and he was even halfway out of his seat before Draco could say anything else.
"All right, fine, I'll move on." Draco closed his eyes again for a moment, reminded himself that Potter was still a sentimental, half-blooded idiot at the core, and moved on. "And finally, it's us Not that it's in us, or that it's a tool we all have at our disposal. That's just what blood traitors say to feel better about themselves. We are magic. It's a part of us as much as the blood in our veins or the thoughts in our heads. It's a part of our souls. It isn't just a tool, it's you. And you are magic."
"...I've never heard that before," Potter murmured.
"Of course you haven't, Dumbledore's always been one of the biggest advocates for treating it like it's just a tool," Draco said. "Treating it like a tool, making it work for you instead of with you, acting like it's something you have to control and keep a tight rein on, and if you can't control it, you shouldn't use it...that's all they've ever promoted. But magic doesn't work like that. Magic is supposed to be wild. You're supposed to live with it and ask it to work with you. You don't have to tell it what to do. It's a part of you; it'll do what you want."
Potter frowned at him, a much more intelligent sort of frown that was his usual. It was accompanied by that stupid hand rising up to cover his scar.
"Is that why you don't like people like Mr. Weasley?" Potter asked. "Or the Muggleborns who go back to living in the Muggle world after school? Because they're trying to bring Muggle things into it and they're not just exclusively living with magic anymore?"
"Very good, Potter," Draco said with a thin smile. "I knew you weren't always an idiot. There are some purebloods, like the Weasleys, who think that we can mix with Muggles and their toys without a care and we'll be better off for it. Now, I'm not going to pretend we never use things that came from Muggles, but it's only after we've thoroughly made them our own. It's not the same. They want to pretend like we're not so different, we just have different tools at our disposal. That's a favorite line of Dumbledore's, and he's always been popular with them. But they're wrong. Maybe once, when Muggles and wizards shared a lot of the same beliefs, but that was a long time ago. It used to be that even Muggles could work with the natural magic of the world, although without magic of their own, they couldn't do much with it. But things changed. We're too different now."
"And then there's purebloods like you, who just want to kill them all off and punish Muggleborns for being born into the wrong family," Potter said with a challenging look.
Draco wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms. "You would have such a crude perspective on it. There are those of us who know that our culture, the way it was without Muggles tainting it, is the only way to really flourish. We don't want to kill off Muggles, we just want to isolate ourselves from them and their influences. And we'd like it if we could get back to teaching magic the right way. Muggleborns have to end up in our world eventually, I suppose, or they'll risk exposing everyone, and they should learn the right way too. We really ought to be sending tutors to Muggleborns' houses as soon as there's a hint of magic, so they can learn to live with it early, like we do.
"And then there's the purebloods who aren't idiots but pretend they are to appease the Ministry and Dumbledore's followers. A lot of half-bloods end up in that group too, if they were raised in our world. Most Muggleborns and half-bloods raised in the Muggle world follow after Dumbledore, because they don't know any better."
Potter frowned at him a moment, then down at his desk like he thought there should be something there that wasn't. "So where does Voldemort fit into all that?"
Draco was actually quite proud of himself. After so many of these little chats with Potter, he managed to control his flinch at hearing the Dark Lord's chosen name quite well. It wasn't that it terrified him, but he did think there was a very good reason why no one said it.
"I did say you should take a second look at what the Dark Lord's offering," Draco said quietly. He hesitated, but it wouldn't really make any difference saying it, so he conceded, "Well, I guess he is a bit more fanatical about the Muggleborn issue...but that wasn't how he started out."
Potter was right that it didn't really matter if he ever ended up agreeing with the Dark Lord or not as long as the Dark Lord wanted him dead, and Draco didn't really think he'd stray that far from Dumbledore's nonsense or his Gryffindor principles either, but Potter hadn't exactly been fed an unprejudiced view of what their side stood for. Perhaps, if he was given a better perspective, he'd stray far enough. He'd already been leaning that way on his own.
Potter said nothing for quite a long time. He didn't do much of anything either, other than to frown at his desk and rub at his scar. Whatever problem he had with it seemed to be bothering him more now that they were on this particular topic. Draco filed that away for future reference.
Then, finally, after Potter winced for no reason at all, he nodded and closed his eyes again. "Right. Let's move on then. You said this wasn't going to just be a lecture."
"You're the one who got us distracted," Draco muttered, but if Potter wanted to move on, then good. It would take him some time to accept that maybe the Dark Lord wasn't as bad as he'd always been told, and anyway, he'd almost bee done with his lecture when Potter had interrupted.
"As soon as out magic manifests for the first time, we're taught how to use it and work with it. The Ministry would have you believe that you can't control your accidental magic, that you have to learn how to squash it and not let it happen. That if it does blow up on you, because you got emotional, there wasn't anything you could do about it."
Draco allowed himself to smile as he thought about what Potter had told him about the incident with his aunt two years ago, and his own afternoons spent with his mother-and sometimes his father-learning what he needed to prevent something like that from ever happening with his own magic.
"That you need a wand to perform controlled magic at all, and that if you use a wand long enough, you'll only ever be able to use your magic with a wand."
Now Potter was staring at him again. Well, they weren't really at the point where he needed to have his eyes closed, so that was all right for now.
Then Potter opened his mouth and out came a burst of incomprehensible hissing and guttural noises. Draco's first instinct was to check whether he had his wand in his hand, in case this was going to be a repeat of the last time Potter had spoken Parseltongue. He had been concerned he might end up cursing Draco last lesson, after all. But his hands were empty, so Draco allowed he brief shiver that wanted to run down his spine. He wondered for a split second how many of the Dark Lord's followers had joined him just to hear him speak that language.
But they wouldn't get anywhere speaking two different languages, interesting as it was that Potter was randomly speaking it now. "Potter, I can't understand anything you're saying. I'm not a snake."
Potter blinked at him and touched his throat. "Sorry, I don't...I didn't realize I wasn't speaking English."
"Obviously," Draco said. "But now you are, so why don't you try again."
"I said, 'of course you need a wand'. That's what your wand is for, isn't it?"
Draco hesitated. This was something even his fellow purebloods rarely liked to talk about. It was safer that way. This wasn't exactly something that was sanctioned by the Ministry, and it would be very easy to be arrested for performing Dark magic if they heard about it. And he could easily imagine the disappointed looks his mother and especially his father would give him if they ever found out Draco had let Potter in on this little secret.
But the point of this was to teach Potter what his magic was actually capable of, including this, and it was also a fantastic opportunity to show off. Far be it from him to deny himself an opportunity to show off in front of Potter.
"That's what they want you to think," Draco said. He leaned down to rifle though his bag for a quill, then walked down the aisle to set it on the desk in front of Potter. Then he took a few steps backward, raised his arm out between then with his fingers spread, and closed his eyes.
He took his first breath, deep and through his nose, to center himself. He'd called on his magic this way once during the holidays to make sure he could still do it, just in case he needed to demonstrate, but it still wasn't something he did very often.
As he let his breath go, he felt his magic rise up in answer, in a wave of warmth and light. He smiled.
Second breath; he stood for a moment just enjoying the feel of his magic. It wasn't quite the same as when he performed spells with his wand, although he was sure that was still easier for him than most of his classmates. He had the proper training.
But of course, just reveling in his magic wouldn't demonstrate anything, so he concentrated on his hand and delighted in the feeling of his magic gathering there, waiting to be released.
A third breath, and as he let it out, he reached out with his magic to take hold of the feather and lift it up.
A sharp intake of breath from his companion told him definitively that he had been successful, and he opened his eyes again to smile at the quill floating six inches above the desk. Potter was staring at it like he thought it might burst into flames. Draco moved his hand back and forth a bit, and the quill moved with it, back and forth in front of Potter's nose. Then he let go and the quill dropped back onto the desk.
A wave of exhaustion over took him and he staggered, holding on to the desk. He was certainly still able to do that, but after so long exclusively using a wand, it was exhausting channeling his magic a different way.
Potter stared at the quill on the desk. Then he stared up at Draco with wide eyes. "I didn't know you could do that."
"We don't exactly advertise it," Draco said. He collected his quill again, by hand, and walked back to the bag to put it away. He wasn't about to let Potter mistakenly snatch it up; it was undoubtedly nicer and more expensive than any of his.
"And you're going to teach me how to do that?"
Draco flopped into a chair and crossed his arms over the back. The faint note of hope in Potter's voice nearly made him smile. "Maybe eventually. You won't learn it overnight, you know. And how fast you learn and what you can do will depend a lot on how powerful you are. I think we're about the same, and it didn't take me long. It is one of the simpler tricks."
"What else can you do?" Potter asked, gaping at him. Oh yes, it felt very nice to show off and have so much of Harry Potter's attention, blood traitor or no.
"I think I'll be keeping that to myself, if you don't mind," Draco said with a slight smirk. "I'm sure you'll figure it out on your own once you have the right tools. Theoretically, if you had enough power, you should be able to do almost anything you can do with a wand. I don't think anyone but the Dark Lord and Dumbledore are that powerful, though. Your wand's important, it's just not the only option."
Potter nodded, still looking a bit stunned. Well, Draco supposed, that was only natural. He'd just been told a good four and a half years of magical education had been a lie.
Then he shook his head and said with a laugh, "I think you've gone mad, but if you want to teach me something like that, I'm not going to say no."
"Maybe I have," Draco said, but he was hardly doing this for free, so he rather doubted it. "Now stop squirming in your seat. You have to be calm to be successful at any of this. And close your eyes."
This time, Potter did as he was told immediately, no questions asked, no dirty looks. It was a pity Draco hadn't thought of doing a demonstration earlier, if that was all it took to get Potter's full attention and cooperation.
"I'm going to teach you the basics," Draco said. "If you practice it regularly, you should notice a difference in classes long before we can start doing anything wandlessly. And we'll be able to get to that a lot faster if you practice too."
"You're giving me homework?"
"Yes, I am, and you'd better do it or this is all I'll be teaching you." But Draco knew he would. He didn't need Potter's jerky nod of agreement to know that. It had been a certainty from the moment he'd levitated that quill through will alone.
"Focus on your breathing. You need to be focused, you can't be thinking about what might be for dinner, and that's the easiest way to focus yourself. You don't have to be calm or empty, just focused on yourself and your breathing and how it feels to be you."
Potter chuckled, and it came out more breathy and more like a hiss than usual, but then he went still and quiet, far more still than Draco would have ever believed he could be. For a moment, Draco was too startled by just how well Potter was able to follow his directions to say anything else, but then he recovered himself and went on.
"You should become very aware of yourself—your breathing, your heartbeat, just how uncomfortable it's starting to get sitting in that chair. Focus on that, and then when you're ready, think about one of the times you lost control of your magic. The time you blew up your aunt would be a good one. Think about how you were feeling at the time, and how it felt to use your magic, or when you realized that's what you were doing. Make sure you stay focused on yourself, too."
It took a moment, a shorter moment that Draco expected, but then Potter let out a tiny gasp and hissed something in breathless Parseltongue.
"English, Potter," Draco said lazily, though he was eyeing Potter with more interest now. He wondered what it was about this subject that was making Potter slip into that other language like this.
"It's warm!" Potter murmured, though it still came out as mostly a hiss. A moment later, he kneaded his knuckles into his forehead.
Draco paid close attention to all of this, but he put it away to think about later. For the moment, he wanted to relish in the fact that Potter wasn't a complete idiot and he could actually learn something useful if he wanted, and that Draco had been the one to teach him and he wouldn't be forgetting that any time soon.
Even if it did become a bit difficult to enjoy it when it became clear that those two words had been the last of Potter's English for the rest of the day. It wasn't easy to figure out if he was picking up on anything else Draco had to show him when all that came out of his mouth after that was unintelligible hissing.
Ron was watching him now.
He'd been watching ever since their first day of classes, when Harry had managed to work so well with Malfoy in Potions and made arrangements to meet him sometime outside of class. It hadn't been much, then, just a calculating glance here or there, although it did get worse after first, their meeting that Tuesday evening, and then after Potions later in the week, when they had continued to work well together and produced on of the best Potions in the class (only Hermione and Parkinson's had been better).
But it had become blatant after Harry had excused himself to spend most of that Saturday afternoon and this past one in Malfoy's company. Ron had been at Quidditch practice for most of them, but that finally hadn't stopped him from noticing that Harry was absent for nearly the whole period of time between one meal and the next—or, in the case of this past Saturday, had avoided eating dinner in the Great Hall entirely, because he had lost the ability to speak English.
Now Ron was watching him, and watching Malfoy too, as if he could figure out what was really going on just by staring at them.
"I don't get it," he finally murmured at dinner on Thursday night. His eyes were fixed on Malfoy, who, for once, was sitting with his back to them, so they couldn't make out what expression might be on his face as he chatted with his fellow Slytherins.
Harry was busy reading over the list of possible names Malfoy had handed him at the end of Potions, charmed to look like Potions notes to anyone else. He pointedly did not look up, and he took the time to swallow his chicken and lick his fingers before he said anything.
"What?"
Ron turned toward Harry, and Harry glanced up. His eyes had a look Harry was familiar with from their various chess matches. It was a look he got when Harry made one of his few lucky and unexpected moves, and Ron was both taken aback and forced to figure out a new strategy, because Harry had just thrown his previous one out the window.
"He's Malfoy," Ron said, shaking his head. "He's still a slimy git. He still insults us—and Hagrid—and he's still always bullying the younger kids...or anyone not in Slytherin, really. I don't get it."
"What?" Harry repeated, doing his best to only look confused and not defensive. Malfoy had been better about all of that lately, at least while Harry was around to see it, but it was true that he hadn't stopped completely. There was no reason to feel like he should defend him.
"How you can stand him," Ron said. He looked back at Malfoy, and so did Harry. Now, Malfoy was leaning in very close to the boy next to him, who Harry thought was called Blaise Zabini, to whisper some secret in his ear. "Why you're acting like...you're friends with him."
Harry shrugged and turned his attention back to the list while he absently pushed the food on his plate around with his fork. No matter what Malfoy said about his family being famous for being good with names, Harry didn't like very many of the ones he'd come up with. There were a couple that were okay, though, and a couple that were already on his own list.
"We're not really friends, but I don't hate him anymore."
It was an uncomfortable admission to make to Ron, and even more uncomfortable to make when he knew their yearmates were eagerly listening in while trying to make it seem like they weren't, but there wasn't much else to say. And besides, he'd already admitted it to Hermione and Lupin.
"Obviously," Ron said, with the air of someone restraining himself from rolling his eyes. "You'd have to be blind not to see that now. But I don't get it. He's Malfoy. Did you forget everything he said at the beginning of the year? Or last year? Or every year?"
Harry sighed and put down his fork. He knew no one else would understand, because they didn't know what he did and he wasn't about to tell them, but he still felt oddly protective of Malfoy. Maybe because he knew now that Malfoy wasn't so bad when he wasn't talking about how superior he was to Muggleborns, that a lot of his unsavory actions were just a lot of posing.
"He's gotten better about all of that. He hasn't even said anything about Hagrid being on probation. And he's not so bad when he doesn't have anyone around to impress," Harry said, a little louder than before, so everyone listening in would clearly hear it too. "There's a lot worse than Malfoy out there now. It's stupid to go on fighting with him when we've got more important things to worry about. Especially when he hasn't been so bad lately."
Ron shook his head, but while Malfoy had been less obnoxious in class, he was probably still overly antagonistic if he ever saw Ron outside of class, like for prefect duties—because he had no reason to be friendly with Harry's friends, just Harry—so Harry wondered if Ron had really seen much proof of how he'd changed. Nearby, however, Neville had turned to stare at Malfoy's back with a look that was as thoughtful as it was doubtful.
"He is still a git," Harry said with another shrug. "But so's Smith, and it's stupid to hate him too."
"Well, Smith's on our side, isn't he?" Ron said. "Malfoy's family's all in with You-Know-Who, and so is he."
"Maybe he doesn't have to be, though," Harry said quietly, keeping his eyes fixed on Malfoy's back so he didn't have to look at Ron. He knew Malfoy would likely rather die than switch sides and betray his family, but it was the best excuse he could come up with for reaching out to him.
He could feel Ron staring at him again, and he wasn't the only one, but he went back to his food and the list of names without saying anything about it, which would convince them he was serious more than anything he could say.
"I hope you know what you're doing, mate," Ron muttered eventually. Harry knew he went right back to staring at Malfoy a moment later; he would try to see whatever it was Harry supposedly saw in Malfoy that allowed them to get along, and he probably wouldn't find it, but he'd try anyway for Harry's sake.