Chapter Eleven-

Malfoy

1993

There was a mouse beneath the dresser. There was nothing noteworthy about it, the same sort of mouse could be found in any of the Transfiguration classrooms for second and third year classes. Stage right was Basil, coiled on the rug in the centre of the room, forked tongue flickering out to taste the air. Off stage, the godly observer: Draco, lying on his bed.

Basil moved.

He uncoiled and carved swiftly across the rug, yellow eyes fixed on his prize. The mouse squeaked in fright and took off, bolting to the wall in search for an escape route. Its squeaks of distress became more and more high pitched as it scampered along the wall, unable to find a way out.

Basil sensed victory, and closed in, the mouse scuttling into a corner and frantically trying to climb the wall. Two of its little paws were scratching at the stonework, while behind it, Basil advanced. The snake unhinged his jaw and struck-

"Petrificus Totalus!" shouted Draco.

In front of him, the snake froze mid bite, his fangs held open, loosely embracing the terrified mouse. Draco waved his wand lazily. "Relashio!"

For the fourth time, the mouse dropped free of Basil's mouth, and lay there, petrified with fright, its tiny heart beating frantically. Draco sent some sparks in its direction to get the mouse back in motion. With a singed tail and scorched fur, it did so. Another wave of Draco's wand, and Basil unfroze, incensed at having his meal snatched from him yet again.

Draco grinned, and the chase began again. A short while later, the mouse was scrabbling desperately at the gap between the door and the frame leading out of Draco's room, and Basil was barely a meter away. Draco gripped his wand in preparation-

The door swung open, and with a final squeak to the rodent gods for its deliverance, the mouse bolted for freedom.

"Draco, do you- A RAT!"

Draco threw himself off the bed in frustration, grabbing Basil before the snake could follow. "Shut up, Pansy, it's a mouse," he said impatiently, dropping Basil in his terrarium and putting his shoes on quickly. "And you ruined my game, I've got to go catch it now."

"But-"

Draco ignored Pansy's protests in favour of running out of his room and down the corridor outside. The mouse was nowhere to be seen, but Draco fancied it was probably going to head for the ground floor.

He had to slow when he reached the Slytherin common room. It wouldn't do anyone to see him in such a hurry. He didn't move for things, things moved for him. Draco spotted Crabbe and Goyle sitting at a table over a set of gobbstones, and considered sending them after the rodent. The moment passed very quickly. They'd sooner step on the mouse than catch it, and that was if they could find it at all.

He exited the common room and followed the straightest path out of the castle. The mouse had a pink, wet, twitchy nose, it would have sensed the quickest way outside, and with its short little legs, it couldn't be far ahead.

Draco skidded to a halt when he reached the grass outside and looked around. There were many rocks studding the hillside that stretched down the side of the castle, and the mouse could have been hiding behind any of them. But there was movement in the grass at the crest of the hill, and Draco took chase again, his wand out.

He reached the drop of the hill panting, but his flushed grin faded when he couldn't see the tail end of the mouse. There was a clump of trees off to the side that could be sheltering it, and a craggy row of rocks that provided a boundary between the road up to the castle, and the gardens beyond.

The Whomping Willow waved on the peak of another hill, and the Black Lake shimmered beneath the faint noon sun. Draco began climbing down the hill in the direction of the trees. He wasn't the only student out that afternoon. There were two or three picnicking on the grounds, others wandering about, enjoying the warmer weather.

Unable to run around, Draco was quickly losing patience. When he found that damned mouse, he'd be feeding it straight to Basil, no more reprieves.

Glaring at every potential hiding spot nearby, Draco almost failed to notice the silhouette of the mouse until he heard a voice:

"Is that a hedgehog?"

"No, I think it's a mouse," was the reply, and Draco turned very quickly.

"It's a goner, climbing up the Whomping Willow like that."

Draco sneered. It was Potter and the Weasley twins. They were right though; now that he was looking, he could see the little brown speck hurtling up the trunk of the Willow. He sighed, annoyed. He'd have to find some other rodent for Basil to eat now, and it had been difficult enough to sneak into the transfiguration classroom the first place.

"I feel quite bad for it," said Potter's voice. Draco drew closer, and there they were, lying in the grass, watching the progress of the mouse. The Whomping Willow hadn't seemed to notice its trespasser yet, but as it climbed higher and higher, the likelihood of it noticing was increasing. The smallest twigs at the ends of its branches were beginning to shiver.

"What are you going to do, go save it?"

"Yeah, all right."

Then, with Draco watching in disbelief, Potter got up, crossed the distance to the Willow, and ducking under a threatening branch, she placed a foot on a knot at the base of the trunk, and hoisted herself up.

This idiot, thought Draco. The mouse was destined for death, and Potter would wind up in the Hospital Wing again for the thousandth time in the year. Gryffindors really were brainless, as much as they waved around the mudblood Granger like she was some great argument against it.

Potter did end up in the Hospital Wing. She was flung from the tree and the cushioning charms that the Weasley buffoons sent after her missed. She snapped her leg in two, but was grinning like a maniac as she let the twins hoist her up, and let a traumatised, but still-breathing rodent slip through her fingers.

Draco watched the passage of the mouse as it vanished through the grass, and sighed. He waited until Potter and the Weasleys had limped off in the direction of the castle, before following, much slower. Basil wouldn't be pleased at the loss of his meal.

1991

Draco liked clothes. He'd stayed up late many nights, threatening Dobby into silence, and hung over the top of the balustrade to watch guests for parties file in. None of them were as beautiful or as good looking as his parents, but their clothes shimmered and draped in eye-catching and dramatic ways, which Draco would later try to emulate with his own wardrobe.

Other people, like Pansy and Crabbe and Goyle, got their clothes from shops, and that was fine, except Draco had his tailor made, and he liked the fixed attention they gave him when his father led him into stores.

"You are a Malfoy," he would say, "and you deserve the best. Accept nothing less."

For Hogwarts though, everyone wore the same thing, apart from the girls of course, so it would be difficult for his clothes to be a lot better than the rest.

Draco pondered this problem, as he stood on a footstool in Madam Malkin's, rather bored. The only solution his mother could come up with was to make sure his uniform fit exactly right, and get new robes as soon as his present ones got too small. If he had to look like the masses, he'd at least wear tailored things.

The witch attending to him, (she had told him her name, but Draco couldn't be bothered to remember things like that,) pinned up the hem of his robes, and just then, Madam Malkin led a tiny girl around a display, and stood her on a stool beside him.

"Hello," said Draco, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said the girl, and nothing else.

Draco frowned. She hadn't looked at him at all, and her hair was atrocious, hanging all around her face like a mop. The only girl he spent any time with was Pansy, and he found her rather stupid, and high-pitched. But her mother was a friend of his, and it'd be rude if they didn't get along. Draco didn't know if this girl was stupid, but she wasn't high pitched, even if she was impolite. She could be shy, he supposed. Perhaps she was ashamed of her hair.

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said Draco, "then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow. Have you got your own broom?"

"No."

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No."

"I do- Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?"

"No."

Draco looked sideways at the mophead, his puffed up chest deflating. All the while, she hadn't looked up once, and Draco thought that if she wasn't stupid, she was very boring. He wondered what girls liked to talk about. He'd gotten very good over the years at ignoring most of what Pansy said, but he talked to his mother, and she was a girl.

Father said that he deserved the best, and he deserved better than a boring conversation.

"You're awfully quiet," he said pointedly.

Draco saw Mophead's shoulders move in a shrug. "Suppose so."

A witch entered the store then. She wore tartan robes and square spectacles that she peered over like an owl. She walked over to them and looked up and down at Mophead, before noticing Draco.

"Mr Malfoy?" she said sharply.

Draco nodded, surprised, but immediately preening.

"You look very much like your father, when he was your age."

Draco puffed out his chest. "You know him, ma'am?"

"I used to teach him," said the witch- the Professor.

"I didn't dare misbehave in her classes," said Lucius. He appeared around a rack of clothing, a parcel of books under his arm, and strode toward them. Draco brightened, looking over at Mophead. Even she couldn't fail to be impressed by him; but her face was impossible to see behind all the ridiculous hair.

"You misbehaved in other ways," the Professor was saying.

Lucius smiled. "Those days are behind me."

"Are they?"

It was the first time Draco had seen someone be so dismissive of his father, and he disliked it immensely. He scowled at the Professor.

"As you can see, I have other demands on my time now," said Lucius smoothly. He rested his hand on Draco's shoulder, and turned his gaze to Mophead. His eyebrows lifted. "And who is this charming creature? I was unaware you had grandchildren, Minerva."

The Professor's lips tightened. "This," she said, "is Miss Potter. Tempest, this is Lucius Malfoy, and his son-"

"Draco," supplied Draco. Potter! He barely remembered to keep his composure as he watched his father shaking hands with Potter. He had to be aloof. The girl likely had people fawning all over her all the time, and he had to put on a good show. When it was his turn, he managed to shake hands with Potter calmly, but couldn't quite help trying to see past the hair at the scar he knew covered her face.

All he saw were the edges of some very ugly glasses, and then the handshake was over, and he had to let go. His initial surprise at the unimpressive twig of a girl being the vanquisher of the Dark Lord was sill present, but Draco remembered his father mentioning that Potter would be starting Hogwarts the same year as him, and here she was!

Malkin, who was doing the measurements for Potter, announced that she was done, and Draco watched as Potter stepped off the stool and stood next to the Professor, staring at her shoes. (Ugly, tatty things with soles that were coming apart from the body.)

"We shall be off now, I think" said the Professor. Her hand came to rest on Potter's shoulder, mirroring the father-son duo opposite them, except at the contact Potter visibly stiffened.

The Professor went over delivery details with Malkin, and Potter mumbled, "Bye then."

"See you at Hogwarts," said Draco eagerly.

As soon as the pair were gone, Draco turned quickly to his father, only to see him give a slight shake of his head, eyes flicking down to the witch who was still fussing with the hem of his robes. Instead, Lucius began to speak to him about his schoolbooks, then the additional reading material he had picked up because the Hogwarts list didn't begin to cover the expansive knowledge a Malfoy should have.

It was only later when they were at home, in private, and all their purchases stowed away with no eavesdroppers around, that Lucius took his son into his study and sat him down. Narcissa joined them after ordering Dobby to make them afternoon tea.

"You are to befriend Miss Potter," said Lucius shortly. "Sending Minerva McGonagall to escort her around Diagon Alley is Dumbledore showing his hand. He will want to recruit her into his band of Gryffindors, fill her head with blood-traitor nonsense."

Draco made a face at the thought. Being a Gryffindor was better than being a Hufflepuff, but not by much. "She said she didn't know what house she wanted to be in yet."

"So there is still time," said Lucius, pleased. "We do not know yet what her powers may be, but she is sure to make a great ally in the future."

Draco recalled Potter, and for all his excitement, was underwhelmed. "She didn't look too great."

"She is being raised by muggles," said Narcissa dismissively. "By all accounts though, she dislikes them, recall that Severus brought news that she had run away last winter, darling? After being returned to them, her feelings cannot be sympathetic."

It would be easy, Draco thought, to become friends with Potter. Once she heard a bit more about his family, she'd be tripping mop over heels to get along. Looking like she did, she would need all the help she could get to find the right sort.

"I wonder if she remembers killing the Dark Lord," said Draco, already trying to think of a good way to ask the girl.

His mother and father exchanged glances.

"It would be best not to mention it," said Lucius eventually. "After meeting us, doubtless McGonagall will inform Potter of our previous... association with her parents' killer. Reminding her of the matter will not be pleasant."

"I won't let you down," said Draco determinedly.

1995

The final song on the record faded out into the jittering whirl of the record player, and Draco stopped the thing all together.

He hadn't actually expected Potter to send him anything, especially not now, but perhaps she took her word seriously. Perhaps she hadn't had anything better to do than throw a few old records into a box and post them over.

After listening to them… they were inoffensive, Draco supposed, wondering why he had ever thought Potter might send him something she actually liked.

He picked up a quill from his desk and inked it, setting the nib to parchment.

Potter.

Thank you for sending the records. I didn't think you would. They're really… I'm surprised. I would've thought you'd like harder stuff. Hard rock? Maybe a bit of Iron Maiden? Perhaps you were trying to send a message. Just? Creep? I'm not questioning your music taste… though I suppose I am. I hope you're having a good summer. Not worrying too much about things. That's likely.

After these few days, I think I understand you better now.

Malfoy.

Draco dropped his quill and looked at the parchment. Then, quickly, he took up his wand, and vanished the addressee. It had been bad enough when he had caught Skeeter for Potter. He folded the parchment and set it under his pile of schoolbooks. All five of the manor's owls were on errands at the moment. He would have to wait until one of them was back to send his own message.

There was a knock at his door, and Draco moved quickly so that when the door swung open, he was sitting on his bed, a book open in his hands.

Narcissa stood in the doorway. Her hands were twisting together in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

"The Dark Lord wants to meet you."

Draco did not move.

If he sat very still, perhaps he might not be seen; might not be expected to go downstairs and into the west wing where for two days now, the Dark Lord had been staying. Father had had to purchase a new house elf just for the Dark Lord, and the few times Draco saw it about, he almost felt sorry for it.

"Draco," said his mother softly, "he wants to see you now."

Draco set aside the book, stood, and brushed off his robes. "Do I…" he thought of his father, thinner than usual, rarely seen outside of his rooms anymore. "Do I need to change?"

Narcissa looked at her son, and shook her head. "You look fine, darling," she said, smiling. It was a weak, painful thing.

They walked in silence downstairs, Draco's stomach twisting itself in knots. They passed the silver-handed man called Wormtail on their way to the west wing, and Draco looked at his mother to see an expression of distaste flit across her face.

Wormtail shuffled past them, and Draco was reminded suddenly, vividly of a rat.

Usually, Draco let Basil have free rein of the house when he was back at home, but these holidays, much to the snake's displeasure, he remained in his terrarium. Draco had seen Nagini, and wanted to keep Basil as far away as possible. Nagini could probably swallow Wormtail whole.

Narcissa stopped outside the door leading to the conservatory, but did not make a motion to open it. "He's just inside," she said, "kneel before you approach him. He'll tell you when to stand." She hesitated then, and seemed to be struggling for words. Draco noticed her hands were shaking.

Draco reached out to grasp them. "It's all right," he said. "We're on the same side, aren't we?"

Narcissa nodded, her chin jerking higher, standing prouder, and she withdrew. "Go on."

Draco had seen Cedric Diggory's body firsthand. His view of the maze had been unobstructed, and he had seen the Hufflepuff appear before the audience stands, sprawled out on the ground, and the Triwizard cup rolling away from his limp fingers. The cheering and applause had been deafening, until the screams began.

Students were escorted to their dorms, and all around the school there were whispers. Diggory's dead. Potter's missing.

Do you think she killed him?

Draco pushed open the door and stepped through. Too late, he realized he had forgotten to ask how to address the Dark Lord.

The room he entered was dim. The candles were unlit, and the fireplace set into the wall lay still and cold. Some of the curtains were drawn back slightly, only enough to illuminate the edges of the furniture, and the lone man standing in the middle of the room, turning to face Draco.

Draco dropped to his knees instantly. Heart pounding, eyes fixed on the floor.

He hadn't known to expect… he hadn't ever seen a clear photograph… no man, no person was meant to look like that…

"Ah, Draco," said the Dark Lord. "Lucius's boy."

His voice was sibilant. Draco repressed a shiver.

"Yes, my lord," tried Draco, still staring at the same patch of carpet in front of him.

"You may rise," said the Dark Lord.

Draco got clumsily to his feet.

"Look at me."

Draco did so.

The Dark Lord looked back at Draco for a long time, his flat red eyes surveying every inch of his body, with an unsettling attention that made Draco feel as though his life were splayed out for inspection. He very carefully did not look at the wand that was held loosely in the Dark Lord's hand.

When he and his parents had apparated home at the end of the term, his father had staggered upon landing. He had waved off their worries, and it wasn't until later that Narcissa had taken Draco aside, and said, in what she must have assumed was a reassuring manner, that he was much improved from before when he had returned from the Dark Lord.

It was difficult to keep his limbs still, to not lean backwards as far as possible, to keep his eyes from looking away, hiding from the Dark Lord's gaze.

Draco thought of his letter, hiding under some books on his desk, burning through the wood beneath. He remembered suddenly that Potter must have faced the Dark Lord in a similar manner. But Draco had no reason to fear; he shouldn't, because they were on the same side…

"What do you know of our cause?"

Draco started. The cause? What had his father said about the Dark Lord? Before… well, before, he had rarely alluded to him, like a chapter well left closed.

"I know… that you wanted- want to create a world where we purebloods stand in our rightful place." Draco paused, unsure if he should continue, but the Dark Lord remained silent, waiting, so he continued. "It's… wrong, how we're forced to associate with mudbloods as though they're our equals… and you want to put things right."

To Draco's relief, the Dark Lord looked pleased. "It has been my goal since I was younger than you are now," he said, "and my will to see it done has never waned." Again, his eyes ran across Draco's body, and he spoke again. "You will serve me when the time comes."

There was only one answer.

"I would be honoured, my lord."

1986

"Why can't we visit Nymphy?"

"Hush, don't let your father hear."

Draco pouted. "But she's fun! She can turn her nose into a snout, mother!"

His mother gave a strained smile. "I know, dearest, but we can't."

"Why not?"

"She… we do not know where she lives."

"Call her in the fire then, mother, please?"

"Draco, I have other things to do-"

"You're having tea!" Draco might have been six, but he wasn't stupid. "Why don't you want us to go?"

Narcissa put down her cup of tea with a precision that allowed no sound to come from its contact with the saucer. "Draco-"

"Is it father?" interrupted Draco, scrunching his face up in thought. "Will he be sad if we go without him? He can come too!"

"Draco," said Narcissa sternly.

Draco quieted sulkily, and his mother sighed.

"Do you remember why we do not associate with muggles?"

"They don't have magic," recited Draco dully. "If they found out about us, they'd hate us because we're better than they are."

"They would," said Narcissa.

"But Nymphy isn't a muggle!"

Narcissa looked at Draco with the gaze of a mother who was belatedly realizing she should perhaps have said no to her child a little more in his upbringing.

"No, but her father is."

Draco merely blinked at his mother, not understanding. "But she's a witch."

"What do you know of your aunts, Draco?"

Draco shrugged sulkily. "Dunno."

"My sister, your aunt Bella, is locked up in Azkaban. She, like your father… worked for a man who wanted to make the world better for us. When that man went away, she did not handle the situation as well as your father. She… hurt some people trying to find the man that went away. She hurt them quite badly. It is unlikely you will ever meet again. She liked floating things across the room for you to grab at when you were a baby."

Draco ducked his head in embarrassment. Auntie Bella sounded impressive in the stories his mother told him, but whenever he featured, he was always doing something indignant, like drooling, or shuffling on his bum somewhere.

"My other sister, Andromeda, you met yesterday."

"Did she float things around?"

"No." Narcissa's mouth drew into a thin line. "When she was seventeen, she ran off with a boy we went to Hogwarts with, a muggleborn."

Draco frowned. "That's bad?"

Narcissa picked up her wand from the table, and flourished it.

A glimmering peacock formed out of silver sparkles and leapt off the table to saunter around the chair legs.

"You cannot destroy magic," she said. She snapped her fingers, and the peacock vanished into sparks. "You can change it, move it, draw it from one place to another, but you cannot erase it. So when a magical person dies… where does their magic go?"

Draco was still watching the sparkles vanish, and resisting the urge to grab at them. "Into... space?"

Narcissa smiled patiently. "No. It looks for a new person. Magical people are born with magic already within them. But muggleborns… are not. Their magic comes from us; magical folk who have passed. The magic of someone you knew, someone you cared about… his or her magic is taken by a muggle child. They have no link to magic themselves, only what they have stolen."

Draco looked at his mother, horrified.

"We need to stop them," he stuttered, "it's not theirs! They can't be allowed!"

"It shouldn't," agreed Narcissa, "but we can't stop it. There are those that have tried, and all failed. It keeps happening."

Draco trembled at the injustice.

"That was why your father and Bellatrix followed that man we speak of. He wanted to put the muggleborns in place, ensure they would not be able to act like us, as though they deserve their magic."

Draco nodded solemnly. It was stupid how no one other than 'that man' had tried to bring the muggleborns to justice. Surely his parents, and his friends' parents could start things up again; make sure the mugglesborns didn't think they were equal. But for the moment, his mind returned to the beginning of the conversation, a conversation his tiny mind was already struggling to remember the details of.

"So… Nymphy's father is a muggleborn?"

Narcissa looked pained. "Yes."

"That's awful," said Draco, thinking of the knowledge of having tainted blood, dirty blood, and feeling quite sick.

Draco did see his cousin Nymphadora Tonks a year later. He was with his father in Diagon Alley, outside Flourish and Blotts, not far from where Draco had met her for the first time. Nymphadora was fourteen, not yet so old to consider it uncool to wave at her little cousin when she recognised him.

Lucius noticed. "Do you know that girl?" he asked.

Nymphadora had two or three friends around her, who were walking on ahead while she lingered opposite the road from Draco, an expectant smile on her face.

"No."

Draco turned his back on her, and tugged at his father's sleeve so that they could move on.

1995

Draco was having a perfectly decent morning. Basil had finally recovered from scale rot, and finally slept the last night through, when a great cloud of owls decided to descend from the heavens and mob the Gryffindor table. Their subject was of course Potter, who then had an explosive argument with Umbridge, been deducted a hundred and fifty points from Gryffindor, and issued with two weeks of detentions.

Educational Decree number-whatever-number-they-were-up-to-now was up within the hour, banning all copies of the Quibbler on threat of expulsion. Less than five minutes later, Astoria Greengrass had pressed an enchanted copy of the Quibbler into Draco's hands and hurried off without a word.

The rest of the day passed in a haze, until finally, Draco found himself in his room, pacing. A copy of the Quibbler was fisted in his hand, Potter's face squinting out from behind two of his fingers, nauseated at the motions.

TEMPEST POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: had made Draco feel as though he had been abruptly submerged underwater, and he pored frantically through the article, then the rest of the magazine at the back of Charms class.

It was discomfiting, it was revealing, and it was so utterly damning that Draco had spent the rest of the day in a muddle, and still now, in his room, he was unable to think.

Correction- he could not stop thinking. Draco dropped down onto his bed with an explosive curse, and tore pages from the magazine shredding them into bits until he had a little pile of brightly coloured confetti in his lap.

The problem is, the Ministry never bothered to tie up loose ends. Folks like Mr Malfoy they let go scott free for a bag of galleons handed over under a table, and a flimsy excuse.

Basil, his little snake tongue flickering out to taste the air, slithered up the side of Draco's bed, intrigued by the strange sounds. He wormed right into the pile of shredded paper, and twisted happily in the mess, resting his head on a coil of his body.

Draco sighed, and cast a warming charm, letting Basil bask in the sudden pocket of warm air surrounding him. He scooped up the snake and the nest of paper, gathering the edges of the magically induced warmth, and relocated the snake to his dresser. When the warmth faded, Basil could make his own way back into his heated terrarium- Draco wanted a walk.

He grabbed his broom and exited his room. It was late, and there weren't any other students out in the hallways. He made his way through the castle with his wand unlit, pausing at corners before moving around them. He would be due a detention and docked points if he was caught, but thankfully he didn't have far to go.

He clambered out one of the open windows into the castle's main courtyard, and mounted his broom, tucking his cloak beneath him so that it wouldn't flap during the flight.

Draco flew close to the north tower as he ascended, staying in the shadows and away from the moonlight. There were still a few lit windows here and there, but they were easy to avoid, and evading the last one, he cut across the sky in the direction of the Owlrey roof.

Draco floated over to the narrow ledge and dismounted his broom carefully.

He was calmer already. Flying had always had that effect on him. The magazine was folded in his pocket.

…the Ministry never bothered to tie up loose ends…

Recalling it set Draco's teeth on edge. Tying up loose ends as though his family were something to be easily disposed of, shunted off into Azkaban like his aunt and all of the rest of them…

So his father had been there when the Dark Lord had returned- he hadn't had a choice about the matter, if he hadn't gone, he would have been hunted like Karkaroff, like Severus had narrowly escaped being…

Frustration welled up in his gut.

There was a scuffling sound from the edge of the roof, and Draco looked up sharply. A rat or some small bird was scrabbling at the tile rim, and Draco pointed his wand in the direction of it, impatiently. "Impedimenta!"

There was a yelp, and the dim shape that Draco had caught sight of revealed itself to be in fact a hand, a hand that slipped and vanished back over the side of the roof. Draco's stomach lurched, and he scrambled down to the roof edge, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

He hoped to have been mistaken, hoped to see some small rodent disappearing quickly out of sight as it fell to the ground; instead, he saw disjointed arms and legs unconnected by a torso, and heard a voice yell- "Mora, incumba!"

Draco watched as the arms and legs slowed, the legs landing on the ground softly, and the arms moving about until in one shimmering motion, a tiny figure became visible standing on the ground in the shadow of the tower.

Even unable to see the face at that distance, Draco knew it was Potter. He saw her tiny face upturn toward him, pale against the black of the ground.

Slowing his pounding heart through force of will, Draco gauged the distance between them, then dropped his broom down, and climbed back up the roof to the edge to wait. He kept his wand out.

It wasn't long until Potter rose above the lip of the roof and leapt off his broom, her face flushed and furious. "What the fuck, Malfoy?"

"I thought you were a bird or a mouse or something," said Draco tightly. "I didn't anticipate anyone invisible sneaking up on me."

Potter scoffed, shifting her shimmering invisibility cloak over her arm, and Draco noticed that she kept a tight grip on his broom, making no motion to return it. "I've better things to do than sneak up on you."

"Apparently you don't," snapped Draco. He thrust his hand into his cloak pocket and pulled out his torn copy of the Quibbler, brandishing it at Potter. "I read your article."

Potter had the decency to flush.

"I think most of the castle has by now," she said, moving up the roof carefully until they were level. Her eyes flickered down to Draco's wand, before returning to his face.

"My father's a loose end?" said Draco, his blood heating again.

Potter sighed, looking put upon. "Well he's not in prison, is he?"

A violent urge filled Draco. It was easy for Potter, with no parents of her own; to act as though family was dispensable. He wanted to shove Potter, or hex her, or blast her off the roof again.

"If anyone took you seriously, he would be," snarled Draco, "you'd ruin our lives."

"No one is taking me seriously," Potter threw back. She looked at the magazine scrunched up in Draco's hand and nodded at it, "Hermione had to organise this whole thing to even get my story published. I told the Minister of Magic to his face all the names of the death eaters who had returned to Voldemort that night. A month later, I came across your dad bribing the Minister in broad daylight. I've been beating a dead horse for months now, and you're in a snit because I'm finally getting somewhere? You'd rather I give up, say nothing when this is everything?"

"Not everything is about you," snarled Draco, as soon as he could get a word in, "you aren't the only person affected-"

"No I'm not the only person affected," said Potter, almost yelling now. "That's the point! You think your life might be ruined? You don't think Cedric Diggory's life was ruined? What about Ginny, who almost died when your dad slipped her a cursed book?"

"He's not responsible for every terrible thing," snarled Draco.

"He's done his fair share."

"Everything he's done, he's done for us- our family-"

"And he's bloody dedicated!" snapped Potter, "he's your dad, you want to think the best of him, fair enough, not the rest of us," then, unnecessarily, and a touch quieter, "he's not my dad."

Draco made a loud, angry noise, "I never said a word about your dogfather, not to anyone when I could have it out there just as easily as your article."

Potter's eyes widened as though she had forgotten entirely. "You wouldn't," she said lowly, "you wouldn't. He's never done a thing to you-"

"And I hadn't, because I'm a decent person-"

Potter laughed, a bark of a sound, short and sharp. "A decent person? You support the Ministry lying to everyone, turning blind eye so that none of us are prepared-"

"I support whatever keeps my father out of prison!"

"Do you? Do you really?"

"Yes!"

Potter looked at Draco in disgust.

"I don't-" she began, then swallowed and continued to look at him as though he had crawled out from muck beneath her shoe. "You're just…" She threw his broom back at him, and the sudden motion startled Draco, so that he fumbled the catch, nearly dropping the broom. "We should make a schedule for this roof," she said, her voice very constricted. "So we don't run into each other."

"No," agreed Draco. He struggled to say more. With awful muggle relatives like she had, perhaps she didn't understand what family meant. Could Draco really hold that against her? The answer was yes, but that didn't mean Draco was unsympathetic. Should he explain it to her? The tangent left him wrong-footed. "I don't have a schedule for this," he said instead.

"Neither do I, but neither of us wants to find another spot, so."

They lingered in an awkward silence, the soft hooting of owls floating up toward them from the open arches of the Owlrey.

Draco thought about writing a letter, never delivered, writing I think I understand you better now. He thought about kneeling in a dim room, a pale, red-eyed face looming above him. Stupidly, he thought about Potter trying to sing Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien one afternoon in fourth year, horribly off key but warbling on regardless.

Now that he had calmed somewhat, Draco noticed that Potter looked worse for wear than he had initially thought. There were long scratches across her face and nose that looked fresh, and she was dressed in a robe over a shirt that he could see was slightly torn.

Slowly, Draco rolled up the magazine he still held, and shoved it into his pocket alongside his wand. He sat down on the roof and tucked his broom under his arm.

"Why are you up so late then?" he tried.

Draco didn't look up at Potter, but he could picture her face, still creased in distaste, probably debating whether to answer or to return to bed.

He fully expected to hear no reply but the scuff of shoes against the roof as she made her way back down, but instead she remained where she was, indecision clear.

"Couldn't sleep," she said shortly.

Draco couldn't help it. "Conscience weighing you down?" he said snidely.

That had to be retort worthy, but Potter only shrugged. "Among other things."

"Did you wander through a thorn bush on your way up here?"

Potter didn't laugh. "My cat," she said curtly.

Draco remembered Potter's cat. Fourth year, they had been calling out the names of the people who the champions were to save from the bottom of the Black Lake. For Potter, they had announced her cat.

Crabbe and Goyle had a good laugh about that, and Draco had laughed too, only later thinking, as he saw Potter surface and swim toward the platform with her cat, that it was all rather sweet. She traipsed around the castle surrounded by a gaggle of supporters, but in the end the thing she would miss most would be a cat.

It must be a hell of a cat.

"I have a snake," offered Draco. "Basil."

"Of course you have a snake," sighed Potter. "Basil. I'm surprised you've even watched Fawlty Towers."

"What?"

Potter finally turned around, boots scuffing on the roof, and her robe folding beneath her legs as she rotated. "You haven't watched Fawlty Towers?"

"No?"

Potter deflated some. For a moment she had almost looked excited. "It's a television show," she said. "So you named your snake after basil. The herb."

Draco bristled. "It's a perfectly respectable name,"

"If you'd watched Fawlty Towers, you'd understand why it isn't."

Draco grimaced. "I'm not going to watch some muggle show."

"No, but you'll go magic-free to play some records, produced and sung by muggles, so clearly your standards aren't so high."

"There's a difference."

"Is there?"

Certainly there was.

"Be more careful," he said instead, "you could've died, falling off the roof like that."

"Falling," scoffed Potter, "worried about me?"

Draco would have scoffed as well, but it seemed unoriginal. "Of course I was worried, you're a disaster."

"Ta very much," she said, but still didn't smile. Her eyes fixed on the edge of the roof, and her expression soured.

Draco followed her gaze. There was nothing remarkable about the edge, save for the fact that it was quite a fall, and wand or not, betrayal or not, Potter might have been justified in hanging on to the fact that he had almost killed her for a bit longer.

Probably she was used to it.

1994

"She's going to laugh at me."

"Of course she's going to laugh. Then she's going to say yes."

"She's probably going to say no. Fred, if she says no, I'll melt, I swear it."

"She won't say no!"

"I'll melt into sludge and puddle on the floor."

"Merlin's balls, she's not McGonagall, you talk to her every day!"

"She's said no to literally everyone else who's asked her."

"You're not everyone else mate, she adores you. Whenever it's just me around, she's always like: 'where's George? Where's George?' Makes a bloke feel like an extra arm, you know. Honestly, if you don't ask her tonight, I'll ask her for you."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I would too, I've had enough of your pining- ow! Ow! Leave off the hair!"

"Alright I will ask her. Common room after dinner, I'll take her aside, and ask her."

"Good man."

"And when I die, you can tell mum it was your fault."

"Oi, ferret, what're you doing, skulking around corners like that?"

Draco sneered, rocketing back from the wall and clasping his potions books to his chest. "None of your business."

"Probably sneaking and spying is what," said one of the twins, the one with a particularly bullish expression. "Slither on then, ferret boy."

Draco's wand was in its holster, and a retort was on his tongue, but both twins were taller than he was, and looked like they wouldn't mind stooping to muggle fighting if he made a move. He bit his tongue, and swept off past them in as dignified a manner as possible.

Not that he gave a toss about the pathetic weasel twins and their pathetic ball dates. Poor unsuspecting Potter, if she was saddled with one of those twins. Their blood might be pure, but it was hardly from one of the respected lines, nor were they attractive either, with foppish hair in that eye-watering shade of red, large long noses, and too-wide mouths with too-thin lips.

As off-putting as it was to think of Potter attached to someone, it was even more nauseating to imagine the smug look on the Weasel brood's faces if it came to pass. Half the school was already asking Potter to the ball- he'd even heard whispers of it at the Slytherin table. It would serve the Weasley right for Potter to pick someone else.

Dropping his books off in his room, Draco picked up his letter for home and after a cursory once-over for spelling mistakes and the like, he sealed it in an envelope and left the dungeons.

In the Owlrey, Draco summoned Willam down from the rafters, and after tying the letter to his leg, let the bird fly with one last caress of his neck feathers. He had asked for some books from the library, and for his mother to send some new records, so he was happily contemplating a pre-Christmas package as he descended the stairs and tripped right past Potter.

O, wondrous fates.

"Hey!" He called.

This would be a turn up. How should he play it? Humble? Awkward?

"Hey, Potter!"

But his feet had already carried him back up the steps so that he was level with her, and Draco still hadn't decided. She would probably laugh in his face out of sheer habit. She did it a lot. He couldn't recall a time they'd ever spoken without one or the other being offended or mocked.

He could… be genuine.

"Could I have a word?"