Roll and fall in green

by Dontthrowsticksatme

Draco Malfoy starts Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with high hopes. Then he discovers he's in the same year as the biggest celebrity in the country: The Boy Who Lived. (This is basically the Harry Potter series from Draco's point of view, with a Drarry-twist. It is also my other fic Crimson and Clover from Draco's point of view.)

8. Chapter 5-2: The Boy Who Lies

Chapter 5: The Boy Who Lies

(Part 2 of 3)

The moment Potter tore his gaze away, he and Weasley turned on their heels and marched off the pitch.

Breathing heavily, Draco dusted his sore hands and spotted Crabbe cackling in the background. Goyle slapped Crabbe's shoulder and they came lumbering over to help Draco on his feet.

'Should've seen Potter's face,' said Crabbe, still grinning.

Draco slapped the grass and mud off his uniform, but before he could decide what attitude to adopt after the scene he'd caused, he got hurled into a big, soft, flowery embrace as girls were screaming and crying in his ears.

'Look at you!' sobbed Pansy.

'You were so brave!' simpered Daphne.

Tracey merely whimpered and took out her wand to clean Draco up.

'Snape said to send you to his office after seeing Pomfrey,' said Pansy.

'He did not look happy,' said Daphne.

'Not happy at all,' cried Tracey.

'Come on, let's get you to the hospital wing,' said Pansy, heaving Draco's arm around her shoulder.

Draco pushed them all off. 'I'm fine. Just – piss off, Pansy, I am fine.'

Ignoring their cries of shock, worry and hurt, he marched off the Quidditch field with large, angry steps, his eyes straight ahead as if he didn't notice the staring and pointing and whispering all around.

The sounds of the crowd grew fainter and fainter, until he reached the dungeons, where he could hear nothing except the sound of his own footsteps. Striding past the door to their common room and rounding the corner, he leaned against the arching walls to take a steadying breath.

YOU WANT A REACTION, YOU ASSHOLE?

Draco's mind kept replaying the scene over and over, as vividly as if Potter's voice echoed through the corridors.

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!

Draco closed his sore eyes. He was shaking, or maybe the castle was. He didn't know what to think, what to feel. All he knew was that he shouldn't swagger into Snape's office looking like an open book, as his father had called it, but Draco found it difficult to close this chapter.

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!

In love – Draco wished he could stop picturing what that meant. It meant Potter looked at Draco the way Draco had always looked at Potter. It meant Potter was swooning about Draco, thinking about him when he wasn't around, feeling butterflies when Draco walked past. Thinking Draco was fit, sweet, amazing. Wishing to be closer to him, ever closer.

It meant Potter missed Draco. That Potter had been hurting.

Potter hurt.

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!

Draco shuddered.

He knew it wasn't true. Potter hadn't paid any attention to him in eight months, and even before that, almost all effort to meet up had come from Draco. Everyone with eyes in their head knew that Potter was not in love with Draco. Potter hardly even liked him. He'd bashed his face in only minutes before.

No, Potter was simply keeping Draco on a leash, saving him for a rainy day. Days when Cho Chang lost interest and Ginny Weasley was busy, or when his Weasel and Mudblood didn't tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. Those were the moments when Draco was allowed to swoop in, enter Potter's stage. To perform to his best abilities, hoping for that one-in-a-million chance of keeping Potter's attention for even a single glorious second.

Draco reminded himself, he had to remember, Potter had betrayed Draco's family the first chance he'd gotten. That wasn't love. It had never been love between them, but Draco had been too blind – too unwilling – to see it.

Well, it ended now. Draco was done with it.

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!

He was tired.

'Episkey,' Draco mumbled, pointing at his throbbing nose.

Time to start healing, he told himself. He didn't need Madam Pomfrey for that, and he certainly didn't need some celebrity – a fallen celebrity at that – whose life had been doomed to end in tragedy from the moment it started.

Draco lifted his chin and took a deep breath. 'Au suivant.'

His marching footsteps clattered through the deserted dungeons. The other students were still at the Quidditch Field, no doubt talking about him and – No: him or Potter. The age of Potter-and-Malfoy was thoroughly over.

Outside the door of Snape's office, he paused, hoping his face showed nothing more than innocence. Taking a deep breath, he knocked and entered.

Snape's office was a shadowy room lined with shelves bearing hundreds of glass jars in which slimy bits of animals and plants floated in variously coloured potions. Draco jumped when Snape's cold voice came out of the corner.

'Shut the door behind you, Draco.'

Draco did as he was told with the horrible feeling that he was walking into a trap. When he turned back to face the room, Snape had moved into the light, his black eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Draco.

Draco looked straight back, hoping his mask was working. 'You asked to see me, professor?'

'Yes, Draco. But first, tell me, have you visited the hospital wing like I instructed you to?'

Draco considered lying –

Snape huffed and swept across the office, whipping out his wand as he went. Draco took a step back. Snape was so close Draco could see the greasy roots of his hair. 'This will sting –'

A sharp pain shot through Draco's face, running from his nose straight down his spine, drawing a wince from him.

'Not so tough now,' Snape breathed.

Draco clenched his teeth as Snape continued to set his bones, stitch up wounds and clear bruises.

'So,' said Snape silkily, his eyes gleaming, 'you finally got him to break, didn't you? Oh, how remarkably like your mother you are…'

Draco refused to give him the satisfaction of a response, even if he was dying to know what Snape meant.

Snape's lips curled. He lifted Draco's chin towards the light. 'And instead of seeking professional treatment for your wounds, you resort to a shoddy attempt at a bit of backstreet healing. Thought you could do what Madam Pomfrey studied years to achieve? Let the ordinary people visit healers, a Malfoy trusts no one but their own.'

Draco tried with all his might to keep his face impassive. At last, the professor whirled his wand in a big motion, making it feel like Draco's insides lined themselves up properly. His breathing became easier at once.

Snape swept to his desk, muttering, '"Thank you, Professor Snape,"' so Draco echoed him. Sitting down, Snape pointed silently at the chair opposite his desk. 'Foolish boy. What did you intend to get from your behaviour out there?'

'I didn't intend anything, sir,' snarled Draco. 'Potter and Weasley attacked me.'

'Did they?' Snape drawled.

'Well, I didn't touch them, professor, if that's what you mean.'

A cold smirk appeared on Snape's face. 'No, you did not touch them. But, as much as it sounds like them to attack for no reason, I do believe there was slight provocation involved, Draco.'

Draco scoffed, wriggling in his seat. 'Hardly, sir,' he grumbled.

'Say, Draco, wasn't it your father telling everyone about a little summer school he arranged for you? As I recall, you have been taught a bit of self-defence. Was he telling lies?'

'No, sir.'

'Judging by that disgraceful defeat we all just witnessed, I would certainly never have guessed you were tutored for weeks. How do you think that is possible?'

Draco tried to look innocently confused. 'Well, I didn't have my wand, sir. It's not as if I usually need a wand during Quidditch, you know, professor.'

'I see.' Snape's eyes gleamed dangerously. 'Your father also told me, Draco, that you became quite the master of a particularly difficult skill… Do you remember which skill he was talking about?'

'I think you are going to tell me, sir,' said Draco politely.

'He was talking about wandless magic, Draco.'

There was a long silence.

'Aah,' said Draco, 'See, I had the nagging feeling I'd forgo–'

'You did not forget,' snarled Professor Snape. 'You deliberately picked a fight with Harry Potter. You singled him out and did not stop pushing his buttons until he snapped.'

'Professor, I swear, I didn't expect him–'

'Do not insult me with another poorly thought-through lie, Draco,' said Snape in a dangerous voice. 'As one half of the notorious Crimson & Clover you were fully conscious of how Potter would respond.'

Draco lowered his eyes. Snape was trying to provoke him into telling the truth, but Draco wasn't going to do it. There was no proof.

'I am trying to help you.'

Hoping to fast-forward this visit somewhat, Draco asked, 'Will this "help" involve detention in any form, sir?'

'For now, I will let you off with a warning,' Snape said. 'If, however, I catch you fighting or being involved in a fight, again, it will certainly have consequences. Is that clear?'

Draco got up, feeling an urge to mockingly salute the man. 'Yes sir.'

'Sit down, Draco. We are not done.' Internally growling, Draco fell back in the chair. 'I must say, I worry for you.'

Draco scowled. He didn't know what to say to that.

Snape was still fixing him with his gaze. 'I know as your Hogwarts Professor I might be the last person you would turn to, but I want you to know you can trust me.'

Draco snorted, biting back his retort.

Snape showed a trace of confusion. 'Have I done anything to earn your mistrust, Mister Malfoy?'

There was no chance Draco was going to tell his professor about the unpleasant talk he had with his parents about the regrettable "connections" Draco'd made, mere hours after Snape left the manor.

'No, sir,' Draco replied, restraining himself to the fullest. 'I can't think of anything at all, sir.'

'Good.' Snape narrowed his eyes. 'I like to remind you that you are also welcome to talk to Madame Pomfrey about anything.'

'Yes, sir, I am aware,' Draco said, vividly remembering the last time he accidentally confided in her.

'And I noticed you seem rather close to Miss Parkinson,' Snape went on. 'Can you confide in her?'

Draco had trouble to keep the frustration out of his voice. 'With all due respect, sir, but I can assure you there is nothing to confide. Can I please be excused now?'

Snape narrowed his eyes. 'Talk to your friends, Mr. Malfoy.'

Draco was taking deep, calming breaths. 'I will,' he managed, 'sir.'

His professor took a long time to think. Then he nodded tightly. 'You can go. Send Crabbe to me when you see him.'

'Thank you, professor.' Draco bolted from the office.

. . .

'Draco, Draco! Did you hear?!' Tracey was leaning over the back of one of the sofas in the common room later that afternoon, stretching her arm to try and get Draco's attention.

Draco didn't look up from his game of Wizard Chess with Theodore Nott. 'Go away.'

He'd been staring at the pieces for minutes now while Nott smirked smugly. Draco refused to admit defeat, but the exhaustion after the match and the fight were taking a toll on him.

'Fine,' said Tracey, turning back again to loudly tell Pansy, 'I think he already knows what Umbridge did to Potter and Weasley.'

Draco tensed up. His eyes involuntarily floated away from the chessboard, the game instantly wiped from his mind.

Nott snorted and only laughed louder when Draco frantically shushed him to hear what Pansy was saying through the bustle of the common room. Scowling, Draco moved a chess piece to shut him up.

'Tower to E7,' Nott said without missing a beat and Draco's king got brutally slammed from the board. Draco flinched, looking over the game in bewilderment.

'Well, I let you win,' he quickly drawled, ''cause you're such a sore loser.'

'That's sweet. Want to let me win again?'

Draco glared at Nott and leaned back in his chair. Behind him, Crabbe and Goyle were trying to multiply a cookie. 'Crabbe, Goyle,' hissed Draco, 'go find out what Umbridge did to Weasley and Potter.'

As the two of them got up, Theodore was having the time of his life.

'What are you laughing at?' asked Zabini, pulling up a chair.

'Me, of course,' Draco drawled. 'Draco Malfoy, the laughing stock of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.'

'I still can't believe what Potter said to you.'

'Screamed, more like,' said Nott, grinning.

Draco flicked his wand to collect the chess pieces. 'Let's do another round!'

Zabini peered suspiciously at him. 'Why aren't you happy?'

Draco looked up at Zabini. 'Are you serious? You are serious… Well, for starters, because I am done with Potter's pathetic charade.' He swished his wand with more fervour than necessary, making the chess pieces fly over the board. 'He is a lying bastard, and he and I have been completely through for months. You cannot ignore me, forget me, rat out my father, steal the Snitch from right under my nose, beat me senseless, and go on in one fell swoop to claim to the world that you are in love with me.' Draco tried to leave the subject, but the words kept coming. 'Honestly, I don't understand what he expected. I was bleeding on the ground from his assault. My blood was literally on his filthy hands. What did he think? That I'd jump in his arms to elope on the spot?'

Zabini snorted derisively, but Nott was ruthless: 'I would have been less surprised, if I'm honest. You're so utterly lost on each other.'

Draco glared at him.

'I mean, what's new? You've been attacking each other since first year,' Nott added. 'Isn't it, like, your love language?'

Before Draco could retort, Crabbe and Goyle lumbered back from their mission.

'Pansy says she'll tell us if you tell her why you didn't use the Impediment Jinx on Potter,' said Goyle.

Draco felt a heat rise to his face.

'What does that mean?' asked Zabini, and like clockwork, Pansy strutted towards them to lean her hands on their table.

'It means –'

'All it means,' Draco interrupted, 'is that Pansy loves to hear herself talk, don't you, Parkinson? It's all that nasty family of hers ever does.'

Pansy gasped, looking sincerely hurt, and Draco would have regretted his words if he hadn't been so furiously on the warpath.

'Well, Pansy, don't tell us your little secret then. Like I care!'

'I care,' said Zabini. 'What secret?'

Pansy crossed her arms, looking pointedly at Draco. 'Yeah, Draco, do you have a secret?'

Draco considered hexing her or blurting out all of her secrets before she could spill his. Somehow, though, he managed to recall that Pansy was his most important friend.

He took a deep breath and faked an angelic, 'Excuse us, please.' It took an almighty effort.

Before anyone could protest, he'd dragged her off to his dorm room, where he slammed the door behind them. 'What are you playing at, Parkinson? Are you trying to pick a fight? Because you should know that I am this close to burning all of my bridges!'

She blinked like she was genuinely confused. 'No,' she muttered, 'just trying to be funny…'

'Well, you're not,' Draco snarled. 'I don't know, alright? Why I didn't defend myself. Snape asked me too and I have no idea.'

She plopped down on Draco's bed. 'Potter has been attacking you since second year and you always defended yourself. Why not now? Did you forget what to do? Panic?'

'I don't know!' Draco desperately raised his arms. 'I just… didn't feel the need, I suppose.'

'Didn't feel the need,' Pansy repeated incredulously, 'to defend yourself when they were beating the living dung out of you? Two against one?'

Draco snorted. 'Please, Weasley doesn't count.'

Pansy scrunched up her face in confusion. 'Draco, don't tell me… you liked it?'

'What? No,' Draco said. 'No! Well, I don't think so…' He considered it, then put his arms on his head in despair. 'I don't know!'

Pansy sniggered.

Draco started pacing the small dorm room, running his hands through his hair. 'Snape said he's worried – Merlin, Pansy, if Snape is worried, there must really be something wrong with me.'

'It just means he caught up,' Pansy jeered.

Draco scowled at her in passing, still pacing the room. 'He says I should talk to someone.'

'Why?'

'Well, probably,' Draco snapped, 'and I'm just guessing here, but it might have something to do with the fact that I – oh, how do I put it – get a kick out of being punched in the face!'

Pansy shrieked with laughter and waved her hand. 'Yeah, so you're a little self-destructive – who cares?'

Draco whirled towards her. 'What's next, Pansington? Running naked into the Forbidden Forest covered in gravy? Who knows where this ends!'

Pansy almost fell off the bed laughing.

'It's not funny,' Draco growled.

It took a while, but Pansy managed to get it together and patted on the spot next to her. 'Come sit, Draconius. Look at me.'

With a mocking face, Draco did as he was told, and Pansy grabbed his hands.

'You're a little weird,' she solemnly told him, at which Draco huffed. 'But that is honestly just common knowledge at this point. It's a good thing actually. You know, Theo said once it's like embarrassment has no effect on you. You just jump back up and ask for more. You let Potter beat you dozens of times, in front of the entire school. Last year, you scratched a lightning bolt in your skin and you didn't even hide it. It almost left a scar. Face it, weird is who you are.'

Draco muttered something incomprehensible, squirming away from Pansy's stare. The lightning bolt actually had left a faint scar.

'You know what I think?' Pansy said softly, wiggling her eyebrows. 'I think Potter loves pain as much as you do.'

Draco jumped up to start pacing again. 'Ugh, enough about Potter! He's a lost cause! What about me? Do I need a Mind Healer?! I'd be in the papers! Purebloods don't need mind healers! It would be such a faux-pas!'

'Maybe you should talk to someone who actually knows about these things.'

'Who? Madam Pomfrey?' Draco scoffed.

Pansy shrugged and started to grin. 'Or your weird Uncle Barney.'

Draco suspected she was joking, but Barney would definitely know what to do. Draco wished he could write to him, but ghosts couldn't hold quills. If Draco didn't want to confide in the school nurse, he was going to have to wait until Christmas break.

He grabbed Pansy's head to press a violent kiss on top of it. 'You're alright, Pansy.'

. . .

It wasn't until dinner that Draco found out what happened to Potter and Weasley. Montague slapped Crabbe on the shoulder when he, Goyle and Draco walked into the Great Hall. 'Only lines, I heard!' He laughed loudly.

Crabbe didn't understand, but laughed, side-eyeing Draco.

'Rightly so,' Draco said. 'Writing lines is still too much punishment, if you ask me, for sending a Bludger to a Quidditch player. He didn't do anything against the rules, did you, Crabbe?'

All four Slytherins grinned as Crabbe shook his head. 'Just did my job. Beaters hit Bludgers.' He shrugged and Goyle guffawed.

'Sucks for Potter and Weasley though,' said Montague, grinning broadly. 'Banned from playing altogether, that's just cruel.'

Draco fell quiet, gaping at Montague, who kept grinning.

'You didn't hear? Umbridge banned them from ever playing Quidditch again. She even took their brooms. Adrian says Lee Jordan saw them shackled to the wall when he was doing detention. Even that precious Firebolt of Potter's.'

Draco felt an inexplicable breakdown coming up and knew he had to close it down quickly.

'Cruel,' he agreed and walked off to an empty seat further down the table. Crabbe and Goyle plopped down on either side of him to mindlessly stuff their plates.

Draco ran his hands through his hair. He shook his head as if he could shake out the odd guilt he felt about the unforeseen consequences of his anger.

Potter had it coming, he told himself again. He brought this onto himself. He was impulsive, hot-headed, aggressive… It was only right he got banned. It was justice.

Draco scratched his head and loaded a few potatoes on his plate.

It didn't even matter if Potter deserved it or not. Even if Potter hadn't deserved it – even if, somehow, Draco was to blame, it still didn't matter, because Potter was dead to Draco. Simple as that. Anything causing Potter to suffer was alright by Draco.

And anyway, it wasn't Draco's fault.

As Draco cut up his meat into smaller and smaller pieces, his mind unhelpfully offered him memories of Harry flying, catching the Quaffle, diving at the Snitch like a falcon, shouldering his Firebolt, walking around in his red-and-gold uniform.

He remembered Harry telling him that when he just got that Firebolt, he only let it out of his sight for lessons, even going back up to his dorm during breaks to check up on it.

Shivering, Draco pressed his eyes closed and knocked at his head like he could force the memories to drop out through his ears.

'You alright?' asked Goyle.

Draco opened his eyes to see several Slytherins looking curiously at him.

'I have a headache.'

Taking a breath, he got up. Hoping Madam Pomfrey had a potion to help him, he swaggered into the hospital wing.

Pomfrey looked up like she'd been expecting him. 'Ah, have a seat.'

'No, thank you, madam. I just came to pick up something against… thoughts.'

She was pouring tea into a pair of faded green cups, her eyes on Draco. 'What sort of thoughts?'

'Well, to silence them, madam. Empty my head, as it were.'

There had to be something with that effect, Draco reckoned. He couldn't be the only one wanting a little peace of mind every now and then.

Madam Pomfrey put a cup of tea on the table and motioned at an empty chair. 'Sit down, Draco.'

Draco backed away. 'I just wondered if you had anything like that, madam.'

Madam Pomfrey firmly locked eyes with him. 'Sit down and I'll tell you.'

Draco considered his options. He wished he could read the woman as well as his dad could read him, so he could see if she was lying. Taking her in from head to toe, he couldn't really find a tell.

'I'll…' He turned slowly on his heel. 'I'll just burn a bit of lavender oil, madam. Thank you.'

He marched up to the prefect bathroom to drown his sorrows in a long, hot bath. It wasn't very effective.

. . .

When Hagrid returned from his failed mission with the giants, he carried a massive wound on his face, but picked up the Care of Magical Creatures lessons anyway.

'We're workin' in here today!' he called happily to the approaching students, jerking his head back at the Forbidden Forest. 'Bit more sheltered! Anyway, they prefer the dark.'

'What prefers the dark?' Draco said sharply to Crabbe and Goyle, trying to suppress the panic rising in his chest. 'What did he say prefers the dark – did you hear?'

Draco remembered the only other occasion on which he had entered the forest, and he did not feel safe walking in there again. He shuffled closer to Crabbe and Goyle.

'Ready?' said Hagrid cheerfully, looking around at the class. 'Right, well, I've bin savin' a trip inter the forest fer yer fifth year. Thought we'd go an' see these creatures in their natural habitat. Now, what we're studyin' today is pretty rare, I reckon I'm probably the on'y person in Britain who's managed ter train 'em.'

'And you're sure they're trained, are you?' said Draco, hearing the panic in his own voice. 'Only it wouldn't be the first time you'd brought wild stuff to class, would it?'

The other Slytherins murmured in agreement and Draco noticed a few Gryffindors backing away too.

'Course they're trained,' said Hagrid, scowling.

'So what happened to your face, then?' demanded Draco.

'Mind yer own business!' said Hagrid, angrily. 'Now, if yeh've finished askin' stupid questions, follow me!'

He turned and strode straight into the forest, but nobody seemed much disposed to follow. Draco shared a look with Crabbe and Goyle, who shook their heads.

To no one's surprise, bloody Saint Potter made the first move to follow the half-breed into the Forbidden Forest, eager as always for a bit of glory.

For some reason, the rest of the class followed the golden trio like a herd of sheep – or, as Father had put it, like voles to the sea.

The Slytherins eyed Draco, who was shivering in the cold and thinking of a way to wiggle out of this horrible lesson.

Zabini looked over the group. 'Look.'

The Slytherins followed his gaze and saw a speck of green tweed making her way down to them through the snow.

Draco grinned. 'Oh! Well, we wouldn't want to miss that show, would we? Let's just hope it'll be worth dying for.'

They sniggered as they made their way into the forest, following their world-weary Gryffindor counterparts for about ten minutes until they reached a place where the trees stood so closely together that it was as dark as twilight and there was no snow at all on the ground.

With a grunt, Hagrid deposited his half a cow on the ground, stepped back and turned to face his class, most of whom were creeping from tree to tree towards him, peering around nervously, bracing themselves for the surprise attack that seemed inevitable.

'Gather roun', gather roun',' Hagrid encouraged. 'Now, they'll be attracted by the smell o' the meat, but I'm goin' ter give 'em a call anyway, 'cause they'll like ter know it's me.' He turned, shook his shaggy head to get the hair out of his face and gave an odd, shrieking cry that echoed through the dark trees like the call of some monstrous bird.

Draco's eyes grew big and Crabbe and Goyle automatically closed ranks. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Pansy forcefully grabbing her friends' wrists.

Hagrid gave the shrieking cry again. A minute passed in which the class continued to peer nervously over their shoulders and around trees for a first glimpse of whatever it was that was coming. Draco desperately wanted to ask what they were trying to lure that enjoyed the smell of blood and those horrific sounds the half-breed made.

As Hagrid shook his hair back for a third time and expanded his enormous chest, there was a bit of movement in the group: Potter nudged Weasley and stared into the black space between two gnarled yew trees. Behind Draco, someone inhaled sharply: Nott looked at the same spot Harry was looking at. Draco watched the group, but apart from Longbottom, nobody else seemed to be seeing what Potter and Nott saw.

'What's happening?' Draco whispered.

Most of the rest of the class were wearing expressions as confused and nervously expectant as Draco's and were still gazing everywhere.

'Oh, an' here comes another one!' said their half-breed guide proudly. 'Now... put yer hands up, who can see 'em?'

Potter raised his hand, and slowly, Longbottom followed. Nott kept his hand down, making Draco's respect for him grow – knowledge was power.

'Excuse me,' said Draco in a sneering voice, 'but what exactly are we supposed to be seeing?'

For an answer, the giant pointed at the cow carcass on the ground. The whole class stared at it for a few seconds, then several people gasped and squealed as bits of flesh stripped themselves away from the bones and vanished into thin air.

'This is messed up,' hissed Daphne. 'Pansy, can we go now?'

'What's doing it?' Patil demanded in a terrified voice, retreating behind the nearest tree. 'What's eating it?'

'Thestrals,' said Hagrid proudly and finally something clicked with Draco. 'Now, who can tell me why some o' yeh can see 'em an' some can't?'

Granger raised her hand. 'The only people who can see Thestrals are people who have seen death.'

Draco made a face at Crabbe and Goyle, imitating the pretentious look on the Mudblood's face.

'Tha's exactly right,' said Hagrid, 'ten points ter Gryffindor. Now, Thestrals –'

'Hem, hem…'

Draco smirked. Professor Umbridge had arrived. She was standing a few feet away from the group, wearing her green hat and cloak again, her clipboard at the ready.

'You received the note I sent to your cabin this morning?' said Umbridge, in the same loud, slow voice she had used with him earlier, as though she were addressing somebody both foreign and very slow. 'Telling you that I would be inspecting your lesson?'

'Oh, yeah,' said Hagrid brightly. 'Glad yeh found the place all righ'! Well, as you can see – or, I dunno – can you? We're doin' Thestrals today –'

'I'm sorry?' said Professor Umbridge loudly, cupping her hand around her ear and frowning. 'What did you say?'

Hagrid looked a little confused. 'Er – Thestrals!' he said loudly. 'Big – er – winged horses, yeh know!' He flapped his gigantic arms hopefully.

Professor Umbridge raised her eyebrows at him and muttered as she made a note on her clipboard: 'Has... to... resort... to... crude...sign... language.'

Draco looked around at his friends, feeling as though Christmas had come a month early.

'Well… ehm,' said Hagrid, throwing an uneasy glance at Umbridge's clipboard, but ploughing on valiantly. 'Right, yeah, so, we started off with a male an' five females –'

'Are you aware,' Umbridge said loudly, interrupting him, 'that the Ministry of Magic has classified Thestrals as "dangerous"?'

Tracey gasped. 'Is that true?'

'They're just discouraged,' muttered Nott.

Hagrid merely chuckled. 'Thestrals aren' dangerous! All righ', they might take a bite outta yeh if yeh really annoy them –'

'Oh, if that's all,' muttered Daphne sarcastically.

'Shows... signs... of... pleasure... at... idea... of... violence,' muttered Umbridge, scribbling on her clipboard again.

Pansy was almost choking on the fit of giggles she'd been suppressing so far.

'No – come on!' said the half-giant.

Umbridge finished writing her last note, then looked up at Hagrid and said, again very loudly and slowly, 'Please continue teaching as usual. I am going to walk,' she mimed walking, 'among the students,' she pointed around at individual members of the class, 'and ask them questions.' She pointed at her mouth to indicate talking.

Draco and Pansy were having silent fits of laughter. Umbridge walked towards Pansy while Hagrid struggled to regain the flow of his lesson.

'Do you find,' said Professor Umbridge in a ringing voice to Pansy, 'that you are able to understand Professor Hagrid when he talks?'

Pansy had tears of laughter in her eyes; her answer was almost incoherent because she was trying to suppress her giggles. 'No... because... well... it sounds... like grunting a lot of the time.'

Draco could hardly contain a roar of laughter. Umbridge scribbled on her clipboard.

The few unbruised bits of Hagrid's face flushed, but he tried to act as though he had not heard Pansy's answer. 'Er... yeah... good stuff abou' Thestrals. Well, once they're tamed, like this lot, yeh'll never be lost again. 'Mazin' sense o' direction, jus' tell 'em where yeh want ter go –'

'Assuming they can understand you, of course,' said Draco loudly, and Pansy collapsed in a fit of renewed giggles.

Professor Umbridge smiled indulgently at them and then turned to look up at Hagrid. 'Well, Hagrid,' she spoke once more in that loud, slow voice, 'I think I've got enough to be getting along with. You will receive,' she mimed taking something from the air in front of her, 'the results of your inspection,' she pointed at the clipboard, 'in ten days' time.' She held up ten stubby little fingers, then, her smile wide beneath her green hat, she bustled from their midst, leaving Draco and Pansy in fits of laughter.

Draco was still cackling when he, Crabbe and Goyle made their way back up to the castle through a cleared channel in the snow.

'That dim-witted troll,' he sneered. 'If you ask me, he got what he deserved. Seriously, who in their right mind hires a half-breed with a giantess for a mother to teach children? My father should've hired that woman ages ago. Maybe then I wouldn't have that scar on my arm.'

'Umbridge said those animals were dangerous,' said Crabbe, looking as though he couldn't quite shake the anxiety.

'Well, obviously,' Draco scoffed. 'A teacher like Grubbly-Plank would never have shown them to us before NEWT level.'

They had caught up with the golden trio, walking leisurely in front of them as if they didn't have anywhere else to be.

'I'm surprised so many people could see them,' they overheard Weasley saying. 'Three in a class–'

'Yeah, Weasley, we were just wondering,' Draco loudly sneered, 'd'you reckon if you saw someone snuff it, you'd be able to see the Quaffle better?'

The three Slytherins roared with laughter as they pushed past on their way to the castle, then broke into a chorus of 'Weasley is our King'.

. . .

December arrived, bringing with it more snow and a positive avalanche of homework for the fifth years. Draco would've managed it fine if it weren't for the endless list of chores that came with being a prefect. One of the tasks was to supervise the decoration of the castle.

'They said supervise, Weasel King,' Draco drawled as their fellow prefect tried to put up tinsel while Peeves was trying to strangle him with it.

Draco and Pansy were sitting on top of the Ravenclaw table, supervising how the others worked.

'Merlin, this is taking forever,' Draco loudly complained to Pansy.

'You could help!' said Granger hotly.

'And why would I do that, Granger? This is servant's stuff.'

Pansy giggled while the Gryffindors glared.

'Don't we have house-elves to do this? Oh, silly me. Of course, Weasley, you're practicing to be a house-elf one day, aren't you? Bet you're dreaming of earning as much as your dad does, one day.'

Pansy fell over laughing as Weasley almost tripped down the ladder to jinx Draco.

'Careful, Ron!' said Granger.

Draco easily dodged Weasley's jinx. 'You see, people of a certain standing have house-elves do these things. You wouldn't know of course, Granger, but wizards – wizards of the proper sort, I mean – well, they never have to lift a finger.'

'You're not lifting a finger now either,' Granger pointed out, looking daggers at them.

'Touché,' Draco drawled, smirking with malicious glee. 'Sort of proves my point, though, doesn't it? Weasel, put those garlands a little more to the left.' As Weasley dropped the garland in anger, Draco smugly put an arm around Pansy. 'These house-elves are rubbish!'

Pansy shrieked with laughter.

Other times, the prefects had to patrol the corridors in shifts with Argus Filch, who suspected that the holiday spirit might show itself in an outbreak of wizard duels. Draco loved to catch students, chide them and send them off to their Head of House. He tried to take points from them too, but Filch bitterly told him they weren't allowed. They could only report the kids and hope for the best.

In a surprising turn of events, Draco and Filch got on like a house on fire, as long as Draco let the simpleton talk. Filch loved the subject of torture; a subject Draco knew a fair bit about. When he was little, he'd found books in the Malfoy library with dozens of his father's notes in the margins, so he told Filch about them and for the rest of the term, Draco couldn't do anything wrong.

'Squibs are so easy, you know,' he told Pansy, back in the common room. 'Their brains are just different from ours, you see, they're blissfully straightforward.' He nudged his rabbity friend, who was peering at the chessboard sitting between them on the couch. 'Nottingham, listen, he gave me – Nott.'

'I'm listening.'

'Look at me.' Nott wearily tore his eyes away from the game. 'Filch gave me free access to the cabinet where he keeps the confiscated stuff.'

The gleam Draco had wanted to see lit up in Nott's eyes. 'Oh boy… It's Christmas.'

Draco smirked. 'You have a plan?'

Nott drifted off into dreamland. 'The mind reels…'

It made Draco snigger. 'Well, let me know when you decide.'

As far as prefects went, Draco wasn't a fair one. He'd shout at first years from other houses for no particular reason, but a Slytherin student could pass the corridor Draco was patrolling in the dead of night with an illegal substance, a bound up and bleeding fellow student, and/or the answers to every exam ever, and Draco would simply wish them a splendid evening.

On top of being an unfair prefect, Draco was a lazy one. He'd shout 'I will report you!' at the drop of a hat, but never actually bothered to. Having to go all the way up to someone's Head of House to make a report just seemed like a drag to him – and, by the way, didn't he read somewhere that punishment should follow right after the crime for it to work?

In short, Draco preferred the threat he omitted over the actual influence he had. To him, being a prefect meant having a free pass to insult people, and he was making the most of it.

'You look rubbish, Bell! Learn an ironing spell, Cornfoot! Ackerley, I'm afraid I'll have to report that ghastly face of yours! Your acne is an assault to our eyes, especially this early in the morning!'

'We should call him Acne-ley,' muttered Nott, and Draco repeated the words at the top of his lungs to reach Acne-ley, who was almost running to get away from the Slytherins. They were roaring with laughter.

One thing you could certainly not accuse Draco of in his role as prefect, was being unaccommodating to his fellow entrepreneurs. He connected students who needed calming or uplifting spirits with students who were selling calming or uplifting spirits; students who needed exam answers with students who sold exam answers; students who were willing to pay to sneak around at night with, well, Draco himself, as it so happened to be. It was all very profitable. Slytherin House never made as much good, fair money as the year in which Draco was their prefect. It was something the Malfoys could be proud of for many years to come.

. . .

On the last day before Christmas break, Draco had trouble getting out of bed. While Crabbe and Goyle were impatiently hovering in the doorpost, complaining about near-starvation, Draco was hopping around on one foot with the Slytherin tie between his teeth, trying to put on socks and trousers at the same time. His hair wouldn't cooperate and took forever to fix, so when they finally arrived at breakfast, the Great Hall was packed.

'Bugger,' grumbled Crabbe, throwing his fork across the table, 'now the bacon is gone, Malfoy.'

'You're such a prima donna,' drawled Draco, stifling a yawn. 'Just wait a minute for the refill.'

Out of habit, his eyes wandered over to the Gryffindor table. After looking the table up and down a few times, he sat up straight in surprise.

'Where's –'

There was no trace of either Potter nor Weasley. Granger was present, sitting all on her own, making it all the more peculiar. Draco gathered the two might have overslept, like he had, but when he stood up to get a better look, it became apparent that not a single one of the ginger Gryffindors were present that morning. With their numbers and colourful visage, their absence made a glaring difference.

'What's the matter, Malfoy?' called one of the Slytherins.

'Oh no,' worried a sixth-year prefect, 'did someone use that Meerkat Jinx on him? I heard it doesn't wear off for five hours!'

'What are we looking at, stud?' Tracey popped up beside his face and finally, Draco snapped out of his thoughts, noticing quite a lot of his friends were craning or turned in their seats to look across the hall too.

'Nothing,' Draco drawled, settling himself back down again between Crabbe and Goyle. 'Just wondered where all the Weasleys went.'

Seats scraped across the tiles of the Great Hall as his friends jumped up to look.

'Oooh!' Daphne called. 'He's right, he's right! They're all gone!'

Draco worried his lip. He wondered if his father had anything to do with this. He glanced at the teacher's table, where Professor Snape was sipping tea and reading the Prophet with an unreadable face.

Before anyone could start to speculate, Pansy had a bite-sized explanation.

'Umbridge killed them,' she decided. 'I mean, look at her murderous face.'

They all looked and had to agree, Umbridge was looking livid.

Draco scoffed. 'She wouldn't look murderous if she succeeded. I mean, if I killed the Weasleys I'd probably look better than ever, you know. It would clear the eternal headache they cause with their flashy heads.' While the Slytherins laughed, Draco spotted the platter of bacon filling up and passed it to Crabbe. 'Well, I wouldn't be surprised if they got expelled. You know, if one of them can beat me up for no reason, there's no telling what the others are capable of. Better safe than sorry, if you ask me. It's hard to tell them all apart anyway, there's just so many of them, you see, and they all exchange clothes too, right? Because of the poverty thing, I mean. I'm not even certain if I could tell the girl apart, if I'm honest – one of them is a girl, right? Anyway, it's what I would have done, you know. Expel them all, I mean. Years ago, actually.'

Crabbe and Goyle hummed in agreement. With their stomachs full, Crabbe and Goyle agreed to a lot of things.

Draco's offhand remark had been enough to kick off the rumour machine. It was quickly noted that Potter was missing too, even without Draco mentioning it. Draco was dying to find out where the blood-traitors had gone and why they left behind their obnoxious Mudblood friend.

'I mean, I'd leave her behind,' Draco sneered when the Slytherins spent most of their morning theorizing. 'She's rather forgettable, isn't she?'

But it didn't make sense at all for Potter and Weasley to forget her. Wasn't the Golden Trio sort of a packaged deal at this point? Attached at the hip?

'Maybe she had other plans,' Pansy said, and they all had a hearty laugh about that. They couldn't think of anything a Mudblood might be busy with, not even as a joke.

It wasn't until after lessons, when they were back in the Slytherin common room, that they finally found out what happened. Tracey Davis had overheard Adrian Pucey telling Graham Montague how he'd heard from Lee Jordan – who was the Weasley twins' roommate – that the Weasley's father had been seriously injured on his job. Dumbledore had given all the Weasleys permission to visit him in St. Mungo's.

'Then why is Potter with them?' Draco blurted out desperately before he could stop himself. Thankfully no one spited him; in fact, all his friends seemed equally curious.

'Maybe they forgot he's not actually one of them,' Tracey sneered. 'They didn't notice he was there, and he got lost in the group.'

'Oh, be serious, Dacey,' said Pansy.

'I am! It happened once to my cousin at a Celestina Warbeck concert. She got trapped in a big group of women and before she knew it, she was on a bus and taken to Llanelli. She said she liked it there. She still writes to those women, you know… I'm actually kind of jealous.'

None of them knew how to respond to that.

'They're adopting him,' Zabini joked.

'Oh please, they couldn't afford him,' Draco scoffed and the others sniggered.

'Well, whatever, they're never going to tell us,' said Daphne fatalistically.

Pansy glanced at Draco. 'Well… Not to you commoners perhaps.'

Draco bolted upright. Quickly, he faked a frown. 'Oh dear! Prefect Parkinson, I just remembered something really important we forgot to tell the other prefects.'

Clutching the chair, Pansy covered her mouth in shock. 'Oh dear, no! Well, Prefect Malfoy, do you think it can wait until after Christmas break?'

'You know, Prefect Parkinson, I really fear it cannot. I would worry, you see. Wouldn't sleep a wink all Christmas.'

Pansy raised a fist. 'Well, if you think it's that important, we should call in a meeting at once!'

Grinning, they jumped up to look up the Head People.

'It's just,' said Draco, trying his best not to show his malicious glee, 'we noticed our fellow Prefect Weasley was missing today, and we got worried, you see –'

'Worried,' Ethan Hanley, their Head Boy, incredulously repeated.

'Well, we are all in this together, right?' Pansy added.

'I'm certain you are,' the Head Girl, Demelza Prescott, said sarcastically.

'Prefects should have each other's back, I think,' Draco added, 'and we wondered if there was anything we could do, you know. You see, we could never sleep knowing –'

'Oh, stop it,' said Prescott. 'We all know Ron's fine. It's his dad who's in St. Mungo's –'

Pansy gasped. 'St. Mungo's! Oh dear!'

Draco didn't bother to hide his grin. 'Dreadful news!'

Hanley and Prescott scowled while Pansy shrieked with laughter.

'It is,' said Prescott. 'He's fighting for his life as we speak, so a little respect wouldn't be out of place.'

Draco huffed and had to look away to stop himself from blurting out something... unhelpful.

'Was this the reason you wanted to see us?' snarled Hanley. 'Because I have to say, even for you this is really –'

'Yeah, whatever,' Draco interrupted. Slowly, he gritted out, 'Where is Harry Potter?'

Two pairs of eyebrows shot up in unison, before Prescott and Hanley shared a look. 'Well, we haven't been fully briefed,' Hanley said pompously.

'But you know it,' Draco snapped, 'don't you?'

'Even if we did,' said Prescott coldly, 'we wouldn't tell you.'

'Now go back to your duties,' snarled Hanley.

Scowling, Draco let Pansy lead him away.

'Potter left with them, we know it,' he snapped as soon as they were out of earshot. 'Why did they take him with them? He's not related and they didn't take Granger.'

'I don't know, Draco,' Pansy sighed.

'What did he have to do with this? Did he invite himself? I mean, is he even with them? You know, it could be some sort of cover up. My father–'

Quickly he jammed his jaws together. He shouldn't blurt out his father's musings about the accessibility of the people Harry loved. Draco knew, though, that whatever happened to Mr. Weasley made Ron Weasley a lot more accessible all of a sudden. It was too much of a coincidence, if you asked Draco.

Pansy was side-eyeing him. 'What do you know, Draconius?'

He shook his head, wishing, again, there was a potion to silence his brain.

Merlin, he hated Potter.

. . .

'Yo, Malfoy, it's your mum!'

'It's your mum!' Draco snarled back automatically from his seat by the common room window. He was watching Crabbe, who was drawing Nimbostratus, who was watching the fish in the lake.

'In the fireplace, jackass,' Montague called over the laughter ringing through the room. 'On firecall.'

Startled, Draco looked over his shoulder at the fireplace, and indeed, his mother's sour face was staring straight at him from the green flames. 'What the–'

'Must be important,' Gregory grumbled.

Draco pushed a first year away and kicked their footstool closer to the fireplace. 'What's going on? Can't you send an owl?'

Mother's face didn't show anything. 'Something has come up, darling. We need you to stay with one of your friends for the weekend.'

'Why?' he snarled.

'We will talk about it later. Now, can you ask one of your friends to stay over?' Draco wanted to force an answer out of his mother, but before he could say anything, she shot him a warning look. 'Remember the conversation we had last year, Draco. Now, do as I say.'

The common room exploded with jeers, 'Mind your mother, Malfoy!' 'Be a good boy!'

Rolling his eyes, Draco turned around to Crabbe and Goyle, who were standing right behind him, already nodding before he could ask. Draco chose Goyle's place, because the food was better there than at Crabbe's.

'Thank you, Gregory, I will Floo your mother with the details,' said Draco's mother. 'We will pick you up on Monday, Draco.' And without so much as a goodbye, she vanished from the flames.

Grumbling, Draco tried to ignore the taunting of his house mates as he sat back in the window seat. '"Something has come up…" It'd better be Mabel's Devil's Snare, or every single ancestor in our graveyard. I'm not a freaking crup they can dump wherever they like. I could just stay here, you know, like a bloody orphan. See how they like that.'

. . .

Despite his reluctance, Draco spent the first days of Christmas break at Goyle's home. Crabbe was there most of the time too, and when the three of them weren't eating or playing games, they went out with Mathilda the dog in search of Muggles to taunt.

The three friends knew better than to come anywhere near Pansy or to even contact her in any way around this time of year, as she was usually in a foul mood. Being forced by her mother to be joyous and filled with holiday cheer every waking minute to entertain countless relatives did her natural temper no good.

On Monday morning, Draco's father would arrive at eleven to fetch him. Draco was expected to be packed and ready to leave at once, like a good little soldier boy. He started to feel pretty miffed about the way his parents treated him.

Father arrived in great spirits, that Monday morning, stepping out of the fireplace with a flourish. 'Top of the morning, everyone!'

'Look what the cat dragged in,' Draco drawled, lying draped over his trunk to try and catch a bit more sleep.

'Oh, if it is not our little ray of sunshine!' Draco got prodded with his father's walking stick. 'Look alive, Dragon-child!'

Scowling, Draco heaved himself up. 'Well, someone seems to've had a good weekend,' he snarled.

His father wasn't listening; Mr. Crabbe had come in to greet him and they'd launched into a classic pureblood politeness script, filled with "I hope he behaved" and "The pleasure was all ours" and every variation of the two.

Draco heaved the heaviest sigh he could muster. 'Let's go, dad.'

At last, his father bid their adieu and, grabbing Draco by the neck to push him into the fireplace, they Flooed home, where Mother was waiting with tea and scones.

'Do not sit on the floor, Draconius,' was the first thing his mother said to him, as Draco had dropped on his knees to help himself to a scone, layering it thick with jam and clotted cream.

'Draco, you embarrass us,' snapped his father, who was still standing around restlessly. 'At the very least use a napkin. Were you raised by Muggles?'

Instead of using a napkin, Draco put the scone away, his appetite lost. 'I was raised by house-elves – in your absence,' he couldn't help but snarl. He was done being their perfect little kid. He demanded answers.

Most of the furniture in the drawing room was ancient, brittle or possibly cursed, so Draco chose a footstool. 'Tell me, why was I sent away like a useless Squib?'

'Do not take that tone with us,' boomed his father, holding his walking stick like a bat. Draco sulkily looked away. 'We had some good news we wanted to share with you, but if you behave like a spoiled child –'

'Oh Lucius,' said his mother, but Father was unstoppable.

'Do not "Oh Lucius" me, Narcissa. I was in a perfectly good mood before he got in. I am fed up with our grumpy sourpuss of a teenager, sulking away in his rooms and moping about like he suffered many great wrongs! We gave you everything, Draco!'

Draco scowled at him, but kept quiet, knowing from experience that silence would take the wind out of his father's sails.

'Come sit with me, moonbeam,' Mother softly said, reaching for her husband's hand. 'Let us just tell him.'

Father sat down, but gestured like he chased away a fly. 'You go ahead. For me the moment is spoiled.'

Draco wanted to laugh; his father could be even more petty than he was sometimes.

Mother snapped her fingers and with a crack a house-elf appeared that Draco had never seen before.

Draco wrinkled his nose looking at it. The elf looked very old. Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it and, though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, bat-like ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery grey and its fleshy nose was large and rather snout-like. Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked.

'Hello, Kreacher,' said Mother. 'I want you to meet my son, Draco.'

Turning around, the elf shuffled hunch-backed towards Draco and bowed. In a hoarse, deep voice like a bullfrog's, it muttered, 'Pleasure to meet the young master, sir.'

Draco cringed away from it. 'What's wrong with this one? It looks sick.'

'Draco,' warned his mother, 'Kreacher has been of innumerable help to us. We appreciate him very much. Do we not, Lucius?' She put a hand on her husband's knee, at which he seemed to snap out of whatever dark daydream he'd been having.

'Yes, my heartbeat. Kreacher has been invaluable.'

'Kreacher is happy to help, sir.' Facing the floor tiles, the house-elf kept muttering under its breath. 'Nasty old blood traitors messing up my mistress's house, oh, my poor mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they've let into her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh, the shame of it, poor old Kreacher, what can he do...'

Draco didn't understand any of it.

'Kreacher appeared at the manor yesterday,' his mother said. 'He is the house-elf of the old Black family, so in a way, he is my house-elf. Can you remember your aunt Walburga? You were very young when we visited her. You showed her your album of Chocolate Frog cards and then forgot to bring it back home. We had to go back for it. Do you remember that?'

Draco could vaguely remember something. 'She had a weird house.'

Mother pursed her lips. 'Would you – Would you call it weird…?'

'It was definitely weird,' said Father, and Draco smirked.

'She had this sort of… vase in the shape of a troll foot?' Draco recalled.

'Correct,' jeered his father, 'but what is more: they had a row of shrunken house-elf heads mounted on plaques on the wall. They hunt me in my nightmares.'

Draco couldn't help but laugh and his mother sourly glanced at them. 'I am glad you two can always bond over making fun of me.'

Draco and his father both laughed at that.

'Anyway,' said Mother, 'Kreacher has been passed on to my cousin Sirius when my aunt died, and he told us he has been living in close proximity to him for quite some time now.'

'Kreacher here was able to tell us some – ah – interesting things about the comings and goings at the Black house,' said Draco's father. 'For instance…' he shared a look with his wife, who gave a small nod. 'Remember that dog we saw when we dropped you off at the Hogwarts Express?'

Draco nodded. Harry Potter's pet was an escaped prisoner, how could he forget something like that?

'Well, it turns out Sirius Black is not simply Potter's guard dog or something of the sort. No, Sirius Black is Potter's godfather.' Father's eyes were gleaming maliciously. 'And as such, Potter has been coming to regard him as a mixture of father and brother.'

Draco didn't know how to feel about that.

'And with this last piece of information, everything is in place to execute our plan.' Draco's father smirked.

'What plan?' Draco asked. 'I mean, what's the goal?'

'Lucius, we–'

'The Dark Lord has trusted me to–'

'Lucius,' Draco's mother said with a snap in her voice like a mouse-trap.

Father hesitated, then quickly said, 'To deliver him something important. Something hidden.'

Draco's parents seemed to be fighting something out by drilling their eyes into each other, until, with a gasp, Father took off his wedding ring as if it was on fire. 'Narcissa!'

'Do not dare,' Mother hissed.

'We talked about this.'

'You talked about this.'

'He should be involved–'

'He is fifteen.'

'He is sitting right here,' Draco snarled. 'You know, I give a rat's arse about this whole sideshow, to be honest, I just want to know why I had to stay at Goyle's house. You're telling me what happened now anyway, so why was I discarded?'

'You were not discarded!' said his mother emphatically. 'And we are not telling you everything, I merely wanted to introduce you to Kreacher and let you know that he will be staying with us for the week, in case we have more questions.'

'Ah…'

Draco traced the lines of his hands, wishing half and half he was still at the uncomplicated Goyle household.

Draco's father kept glancing from his wife to his son. When Draco noticed and their eyes met, Father seemed to make up his mind. 'The reason your mother sent you away was that I had to discuss Kreacher's information with the Dark Lord,' he said loudly.

Mother sighed deeply.

'The Dark Lord was here?' Draco said, baffled. 'Here? In the manor?'

'Indeed, and your mother –'

'I thought we agreed–' said Draco's mother curtly.

'You agreed,' snapped Draco's father. 'I wanted him to meet my son.'

'Our son, and that is out of the question,' said Draco's mother, shooting Draco a stern look too. 'It is out of the question, you hear me? I swear to Merlin, Lucius, if I find out you have introduced our fifteen-year-old boy to the Dark Lord –' Her lips were a thin line as she considered her options; Father lazily raised an eyebrow '– I will take him and leave.'

Father rolled his eyes, shook his head and sighed.

'Do not underestimate me,' Mother hissed. She was wearing her Medusa look and reaching for her wand.

Draco made himself as small as he could. He couldn't remember the last time his parents fought like this – or fought at all.

His father took her hands. 'Come now, my heartbeat… You know perfectly well I never underestimate you. Did you forget my Boggart?' Mother suppressed a smirk. 'If it really means so much to you, I will do everything I can to keep our son away from the Dark Lord. You have my word.'

Draco's mother eyed her husband suspiciously. Draco thought she was wise to do so; he could almost hear the cogs in his father's mind turning, trying to find a way around his promise.

His father smirked, ducking his head. 'Are we going to need an Unbreakable Vow?'

Mother pulled her hands back, inhaling sharply and looking away. 'Eat your scone, Draco.'

Draco didn't hesitate. They were good scones.

'Dad?' he asked after a moment. 'Can I bring two more friends to Mr. Yaxley's lessons?'

His father was preoccupied, stroking Mother's hair out of her face and neck while whispering softly into her ear.

'Dad?'

He snapped, 'Yes, Draco, make your own decisions.'

When a giggle escaped his mother, Draco seized his scone and got out of the drawing room.

He decided to write to Nott and Zabini with an invitation to Yaxley's lesson. It was rather short-notice, with the lesson being that same night, but he gathered it would add to the exclusivity. He already talked to them about his tutor, letting them in on the "secret" using the same lines he'd fed Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy. Like them, Zabini and Nott accepted eagerly and without hesitation. If he wasn't mistaken, Nott even seemed slightly impressed with Draco, or maybe he only saw what he wanted to see.

During the summer Draco hadn't seen the point in practicing these spells when they would learn them at school anyway, but after Umbridge's ridiculous "theoretical" lessons, he was suddenly quite grateful for their Remedial Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons, as they were still unfairly expected to perform the spells in practice on their O.W.L. exams. Having his friends with him made the lessons a lot more bearable anyway.

Pansy was having the most trouble with wordless magic, since she got so excited all the time that she screamed her spells at the top of her lungs anyway. Nott couldn't get the hang of the Impediment Curse; for some reason he kept being blown back by his own spell while the other person remained standing. Zabini hated Reducto, simply because of the loud bangs. He refused to do them anymore, claiming he valued his hearing. Crabbe and Goyle had trouble with everything, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves nonetheless. Goyle couldn't stop blowing things up, and Crabbe loved setting things ablaze; it seemed to have cured him from his fear of fire.

. . .

'Barney?'

Draco was lying spread out on the antique divan in his dressing room, one arm dangling to the floor and one arm over his eyes. His dressing room was the only one of his rooms that didn't have windows from floor to ceiling, and he was not in the mood for sunlight.

'Baaaarneeey?'

'You rang,' drawled Uncle Barney, floating in through one of the closets.

Draco lifted his arm to look at him. He seemed sulky.

'Oh no, don't tell me,' Draco snarled, 'you're still angry at me for playing J'avais Rêvé all summer?'

Barney folded his hands in front of him in the same way Draco's mother did when she was gathering her thoughts before a rant. 'No,' he said. 'I am not still angry at you for playing the same song over and over and over until we were all crying and ready to die again. Try again.'

Draco scowled at him. 'You want to play games? Spit it out, old man, what did I do to you?'

Barney shrugged pseudo-carelessly. 'Well, it might come as news to you, young man, but generally people – and when I say "people" that includes ghosts, shockingly – well, they do not appreciate being screamed at. Even when you want them to – ah, how did you put it? Oh, I remember – piss off.' At those last words, Barney fixed his eyes on Draco, glinting with indignation.

Draco threw him a long look. 'You're joking... You're still angry about that? You know I've told people worse for less.'

'It was the way you said it.' Barney sulkily crossed his arms. 'You sounded like your father – Non, petit, do not give me that look! It is not a good thing.'

'I think I can decide that for myself, thank you. My father has the Ministry in his back pocket, you see, so if –'

Barney floated out of the room without another look.

It startled Draco; he hadn't considered the option. 'Non,' he whinged, 'Oncle Barnaby, reviens! I need to talk to you…'

There was no reply. The ghost didn't return.

Draco dropped his head in his hands, feeling quite lost all of a sudden. This whole year felt like he was being torn in every direction with equal fervour. And he had no clue where he wanted to go himself.

'About what?' came a whisper in his ear and Draco screamed. Barney was floating behind him, sniggering. 'So now you need me, do you?' Putting one hand behind his ear and one in his side, he struck a pose. 'Tell me how much you need me.'

Draco suppressed a smirk. He wished he could express how fond he was of his uncle.

'You know I do, old sap,' he said. 'I mean, I can't exactly ask mummy and daddy why I got a kick out of being smacked around by Potter, can I? It's the latest step in my descent into lunacy, apparently.'

Barney's barking laugh lifted at least half of Draco's anxiety in an instant.

'Everyone's worrying about me,' Draco said. 'Even Snape. Can you imagine Snape worrying, Barnaby, about anything, ever?'

'It will be Professor Snape for you, Draco. Now tell me everything.'

Draco heaved a sigh and told his ancestor everything. He told him how Potter kept creeping under his skin, how he got on every last of his nerves wherever Draco went. He told him about the match Draco would've easily won if it wasn't for Potter's stupid Firebolt, and about how Draco hadn't been able to stop provoking the guy after losing, how triumphant he'd felt when Potter attacked him and how he hadn't felt the need at all to defend himself – even though he'd been practicing all summer for a situation exactly like it. What was more: he hadn't even felt the need to get healed afterwards and almost resented Snape for doing so.

'What's wrong with me?' he concluded. 'Potter is our worst enemy. Why can't I leave him alone? Why do I want to fight him all the time? What's the point? I hate everything about him, I don't need any more confirmation.'

'Hmm, everything?' said Barney with little lights in his eyes.

Draco threw him a look. 'Well, I'm not blind, if that's what you mean,' he snarled, 'but apart from that… I have been completely wrong about him. He is rotten to the core and everyone saw it except for me.'

'Oh hush, petit. You are not going crazy. Our old Cousin Ferdinand was exactly the same.'

Draco leaned his arms on the backrest of the divan. 'Ouais? La verité, oncle, should I talk to Madam Pomfrey? Or a Mind Healer?'

'Absolutely not! You are perfectly perfect just the way you are. You are not crazy and you certainly do not need to confide in an outsider – especially not at the brink of a war.'

Draco dropped his eyes, plucking at a loose thread of the divan. He lowered his voice. 'Are you worried? About the war, I mean?'

'Of course I am,' Barney said gruffly. 'I remember the last one like it was yesterday.'

'But those were the Golden Days,' said Draco.

'Yes, so I've heard…'

'You don't agree?'

'Well, let me put it this way,' Barney mused. 'What I remember from those "Golden Days" are your mother's gnawed nails and the packed trunk she kept in the secret room under the drawing room floor. I remember the maddening silence of your father – running strategies and scenarios over and over in his mind. The hard line of his mouth, and the ways in which he would come home covered in blood, sometimes his own. I remember your cradle sparking and crackling with protective spells. And I especially remember your mother, sitting alone by the grand fireplace, night after night, holding you tight and singing Keep the Home Fires Burning in rather the same way you sang J'avais Rêvé last summer.'

Draco gaped at him.

'It might have been golden at first,' Barney said, 'but it turned… rather grim by the end.'

Draco swallowed a lump in his throat. 'Well, I'm certain, this time will be different, right? I mean, they learned from the first time, you see.'

Barney did not reply to that.

Draco didn't like the look on his face, so he changed the subject. 'Did you see the Dark Lord this weekend? He visited the manor, father said.'

'I did,' said Barney with an oddly closed expression.

Draco eagerly sat up. 'Well? What was he like?'

His ancestor pursed his lips. 'He looked… worse for wear.'

'Well, yeah, he rose from the dead,' drawled Draco. 'It's amazing.'

Barney inhaled sharply. 'That certainly is a word for it – Say, Draco, I'm curious, what do you think about this plan of your father's to control Potter by using someone he loves?'

Draco frowned, dropping his chin in his arms again. 'Well, I mean… you know, it's not my favourite thing ever… I mean, especially if Potter keeps shouting at everyone that he loves me… Because, you know, it might… well… put me in an awkward position.'

'Pretty awkward,' agreed Barney. He looked at Draco like he expected him to say more and Draco shrugged.

'I don't know what you want me to say about it. It's a clever move. I bet it will work too, with Potter loving to be the hero all the time. You know, I told dad that,' he proudly added, but Barney didn't seem impressed. 'And I made certain they won't consider using me. I told Father that Potter loves Weasley, and now Kreacher told him about Sirius Black too. So you don't have to worry about that. I don't believe Potter would drop anything for me anyway – or even notice it if I'd be in trouble, for that matter… He never did before.' Draco forced another shrug, avoiding Barney's eyes. 'So…'

'So?'

Draco picked at his nail. 'Yeah… it's… whatever.'

Barney lowered himself so his face was inches from Draco's. 'Drakey, you were over the moon with this boy. Only a few months ago, you told me you wanted to marry him. Then the war broke out, all your friends and family told you they hated him and dished up all sorts of reasons why you should too, and on top of that, your parents said they would prefer you never existed if you liked this boy. Oh, and you found out that both you and Potter will be in grave danger when the Dark Lord finds out you like each other.' Barney leaped up. 'Well, and who'd have thought? In that truly characteristic Malfoy way, you made a perfect U-turn. All of a sudden, you hate Potter with as much passion as you used to love him with only last year.'

Draco narrowed his eyes. 'Uncle Barnaby, what are you implying?'

'Well, it is worth noting how suspiciously convenient it is to dislike the boy, considering the circumstances.'

'It is not convenient,' Draco snarled, 'it is a logical consequence.'

'When did logic ever influence love, mon petit?'

Draco clenched his fists. Barney's words angered him, but he couldn't articulate why.

'I am not saying you're doing anything wrong,' Barney assuaged. 'I only think you should consider why you are doing it.'

Draco snapped, 'You make it sound like I'm simply following the crowd! Harry hurt me – me! I have my own reasons to hate him! I was angry with him even before the war started, not just after, like everyone else. I know him better than anyone else, and I hate him for him! Because he is a lying, arrogant, cold-hearted, careless –'

Barney put his hands in the air. 'D'accord, d'accord!' He fixed his eyes on Draco's with unnerving intensity. 'I'm on your side, compris? Whatever happens.'

And just like that, Draco felt like crying. He didn't even know why. Furiously blinking away tears, he jumped up.

'Je m'excuse. I should – I should help my mother.'

. . .

Mother was decorating the Christmas tree in the parlour. The house-elves decorated all the others in the manor, but she liked to do this one herself, as the parlour was more their own living space than the other rooms, where they only ever came to entertain guests. She was humming a song, only singing a line every once in a while.

'And it's joy be to you and a jolly wassail…'

'Mother?'

She turned around. 'Draco, come help me, darling. What do you think, more red or more silver?'

'Less gold,' Draco drawled and his mother smirked.

'Of course.'

Draco picked up a long, silver garland, absentmindedly turning it over in his hands. 'Mother, Uncle Barnaby told me about the first war.'

His mother smiled to herself. 'The Golden Days.'

'Yes…' He took a breath, feeling like he was about to say something secret. 'He said you used to sing a song called Keep the Home Fires Burning.'

She froze for a second. Then she huffed and looked at him. 'Did he now? He should be reminded that there were lots of pregnancy hormones involved.'

'I want to play it for you. How does it go?'

His remark drew a rare, genuine smile from her, blooming slowly. She put down her wand to usher him closer and kissed him on the cheek. 'Oh, you are a charmer. Come on, let me teach you.'

She abandoned the Christmas tree to sit behind her piano. The one in the parlour was hers; she'd taken it with her from her parents' home; it was the one she learned how to play on from her grandfather when she was little.

She scootched over on the stool to make room for Draco, who put his hands above the keys to mimic her movements as she played, to get a first feel for the song.

She frowned for a second to remember the song, then started:

'Keep the home fires burning,

While our hearts are yearning,

Though our lads are far away

They dream of home.

There's a silver lining

Through the dark cloud shining,

Turn the dark cloud inside out,

Till our boys come home.'

Draco forgot to play along. He was staring at his mother. The picture of her sitting by the grand fireplace with him as a baby, singing those words, lodged itself firmly in his mind. It quietly broke his heart.

She looked up at him with a wistful smile. 'You have grown so quickly… Back then your father could hold you in one hand. I used to swaddle you into his old Slytherin scarf.' She smiled again, watching Draco's hands with faraway eyes. 'So he'd be with you.'

'Are you worried about the war?' he asked her.

'Not a second. Your father and I will keep you perfectly safe.'

It wasn't the answer he'd expected or meant to get.

'But you don't want me to meet the Dark Lord.'

Her head shot up, her eyes cold. 'You are not an asset in this war, Draco. You are a child – my child – and if it were up to me, I would make certain you would not even know there was a war in the first place. There is simply no reason for a child to be involved.'

Draco scowled, sucking on his teeth.

'Now pay attention,' said his mother, and she played him the song again.

. . .

The owl that delivered the Daily Prophet to the Slytherin breakfast table dropped the paper smack on top of Draco's head. He hated it when that happened. Grunting, he picked it up and smoothed it out next to his plate. Loading another fork full of scrambled eggs, he gazed at the front page and almost dropped it in his lap.

'Look, Crabbe, Goyle,' he said softly as he spread the newspaper on the table in front of them. 'It worked,' he hissed, unable to hide his pride. 'My dad's been talking about this since summer.'

Ten black-and-white photographs filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards' faces and the tenth, a witch's. 'MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN,' the headline read. A few of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

Antonin Dolohov, read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale face who was sneering up at them; convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett. Augustus Rookwood, said the caption beneath a pockmarked man with greasy hair who was leaning against the edge of his picture, looking bored; convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic Secrets to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But Draco's eyes were drawn to the picture of the witch. Her face had leapt out at him the moment he had seen the page. She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly in the picture, though he had seen it sleek, thick, and shining. She glared up at him through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her mouth. She retained vestiges of great good looks, but Azkaban had taken most of her beauty.

Bellatrix Lestrange, convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom – and Draco Malfoy's favourite aunt.

That last bit wasn't in the papers, but if you asked Draco, it should have been. Who cared about the Longbottoms? They probably weren't the brightest stars in their constellations to start with. The Daily Prophet had always been horribly one-sided in the way they told their news, or in Sirius Black's case: plain wrong. Draco'd heard completely different things about the people covering the front page.

'Mass breakout,' Crabbe slowly read.

'Yes, they brought them home,' Draco impatiently explained. 'That one is my aunt. My mother will be thrilled.'

That morning, Draco didn't get a letter from his parents. There was no need. He knew they were jubilant, ecstatic, triumphant. He could just picture his Mother setting the house-elves to a never-ending list of tasks to make the guest room ready and their honoured guest at home. He could picture her pampering her sister with food and fresh pillows and the best books from the library, talking her ears off about everything she had missed in the past fifteen years.

Filled with proud excitement, Draco folded the paper and threw it aside. His breakfast tasted better than usual that morning.

. . .

Mid-sentence, Pansy's voice trailed off, as she watched something over Draco's shoulder. She squinted. 'Oh no, they didn't!' She stormed off.

Confused, Draco stared after her, trying to figure out what'd gotten into her.

'Look, look!' cried Lavender Brown, leering with some sort of weird rope. 'I'm saved from the Nargles!'

'Thank Merlin!' jeered Parvati Patil. 'Can you imagine what they'd do to you if you didn't have a Butterbeer cork?!'

The large group of girls they were entertaining burst out laughing.

'Carpe Retractum!' shouted Pansy and the Butterbeer cork necklace shot out of Brown's hands towards Pansy.

For a second, the girls were too surprised to respond. Then Patil sneered, 'Don't tell me you believe in Nargles too, like Loony?'

'Ooh, was it the Nargles that made you look so ugly?' said Brown, and the girls sniggered.

Pansy held the necklace in one fist, while raising her wand in her other.

'What's the matter?' said Patil. 'You're not gonna cry again, are you?'

'Mimblewimble,' screamed Pansy. She screamed it three times, hexing all three of the girls in quick succession. Then she bellowed, 'Who's next?!'

The three girls squeaked in fear and huddled closer together, showing each other there tongues, which were tied in a knot. Their crowd quickly fled.

'I thought so,' growled Pansy, face livid, as she stomped back to the Slytherins.

Her friends seemed mystified. 'Why did you do that?' hissed Daphne.

'I hate them,' said Pansy.

Tracey looked her up and down. 'That's the ugliest necklace I've ever seen,' she scoffed.

Pansy looked at the necklace as if she'd never seen it before. She snorted. 'Yeah… It is.'

'Why ever would you steal it?'

'It's not theirs,' grumbled Pansy, stuffing the necklace in her bag. She glanced around at Draco, who quickly shot her a look. 'We're Prefects,' she said, lifting her chin. 'This is our job.'

The girls snorted. 'Since when?'

Pansy shrugged. 'I dunno. Did you see their faces though?'

As soon as the Slytherin girls were done laughing at the Gryffindors and moved on to the subject of their History of Magic essay, Draco pulled Pansy towards him. 'Merlin, Pansy, could you be more obvious? You're embarrassing me too, you know,' he snarled. 'Why not put big neon signs over our heads, screaming: gay for the enemy.'

Pansy laughed loudly. 'I'll consider it.'

He wanted to shake her. 'I swear, Parkinson, we have got to get it together.'

They were attracting attention again, so Draco pulled her behind a tapestry, where she pushed him. 'What did you want me to do?' she hissed. 'Let them get away with it? Would you have done that?'

'Allez, Pansington, we both know I would have been the one doing the bullying in the first place.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Right. As if that's not obvious.'

'Piss off. Let's just… lay low or something, from now on.'

'Yeah, yeah,' muttered Pansy. She glanced at him from underneath her lashes. 'We'll be fine, Draco. I'll be good.'

Draco huffed and crossed his arms. 'Well, I won't be.'

When Pansy started laughing, Draco smirked.

When they walked back to their friends, someone tugged at Draco's sleeve.

'Malfoy, did you hear?'

Draco lazily looked around to see Nott's shiny eyes. 'What, Nottingham?'

'Hagrid's on probation. Weasley screamed it through the hall this morning.'

Draco frowned. 'Why on Earth would he scream– Wait.' He stopped dead in his tracks. 'You mean, Hagrid is not allowed to teach anymore?'

Nott smirked. 'Umbridge banned him.'

'You're joking!' Draco grinned at Crabbe and Goyle. 'Wait 'till my father hears this. This week already can't get any better.' As they walked on to class, there might very well have been a spring in Draco's step. 'On probation, this is amazing. Saved from that half-breed's horror lessons at last! You know, I am starting to like this Umbridge woman, despite her fashion sense, and that's saying something. Do you think she can get that giant oaf to Azkaban next if we ask her nicely?' He spotted a messy figure passing through the crowd and whipped around. 'Hey, Potter! We heard about your elephant pal! Such a shame we can't get attacked by monsters anymore! You gonna have a cry with the fat oaf about it, Potter?'

Potter made a rude gesture and Draco sniggered. Turning around, he saw all his friends making the rude gesture back at Potter: Crabbe and Goyle, the girls, Zabini and Nott and even Jason the Mudblood. It made Draco feel all warm and tingly inside.

Then Pansy caught his eye. She made jazz hands above her head, mouthing "Gay for the enemy." He made a doubly rude gesture to her.

Hagrid's probation wasn't a big topic of conversation those next few days, as it was overshadowed by the ten escaped Death Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few people who read the newspapers. Rumours were flying that a few of the convicts had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were hiding out in the Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Sirius Black had done.

Those who came from Wizarding families had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemort's; their achievements during the days of Voldemort's reign were legendary. There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors.

Draco didn't pay much attention to it. He knew many of the stories were either exaggerated, one-sided or greatly downplayed by leaving out exactly what had made it such a power move. He noticed other students were doubtful of the Prophet's information, too. Once or twice, he was certain he overheard snatches of conversation that suggested that the speakers were not satisfied with the Prophet's version of how and why ten Death Eaters had managed to break out of Azkaban fortress. In their confusion and fear, though, these doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to them, the one that Potter and Dumbledore had been spreading since the previous year. Draco wondered if he should be worried about this development. He decided to write to his father about it that night.

. . .

'Babe,' whispered Pansy as she wriggled herself into the chair Draco occupied, laying one leg over his lap and bending the other uncomfortably behind his back.

Draco made room for her, pulled her leg closer and rearranged her skirt so it covered her; all while pretending to keep reading. 'You know, there are other seats.'

'I need to tell you something.'

He perched an eyebrow, but she seemed rather serious, so he put down his book and the quill with which he'd been scribbling his opinion into the margins. 'What? Did someone die?'

'We saw Potter today in Hogsmeade.'

'Congratulations,' he drawled. 'Was he on a soapbox raving about his newest hallucinations?'

'No…' Pansy bit her lip. 'He was on a date. With Cho Chang.'

A knot in Draco's stomach tightened. He picked up his book again.

'They looked really uncomfortable, though,' Pansy quickly added. 'We made fun of them for you.'

'You didn't need to,' he snarled. 'I don't care. Honestly. He can date the entire school, for all I care. I'm used to it anyway, I mean, it's not like I could ever stop him in the first place, you see.'

'You know that's not true,' Pansy said. 'I think it's rather quick, don't you? Didn't he declare his love for you only a few weeks ago?'

Draco snorted joylessly. 'Yes, well, it would be quick if it had been true what he said. But, like I already told you, he was lying… You see, it's actually The Boy Who Lies, not The Boy Who Lives; the V was a typo.'

Pansy hummed like she wasn't even listening. 'You know, Tracey had an interesting theory–'

'Did you hear me?' Draco demanded. 'I said the V was a typo.'

'Yeah yeah, you're a hoot. Listen. I mean, Potter wasn't exactly trying to hide their date, right? Flaunting around Hogsmeade like that.' Something jabbed at Draco's insides at those words, but he ignored it. 'So, you know, Tracey reckons that Potter was hoping you would see them.'

Draco scowled at her. 'Right... Tracey thinks Potter is dating Chang to make me jealous?' He looked away, startled at the ridiculous hint of hope fluttering through him. It wasn't true, so he shook his head. 'She has a wild imagination, that girl. Potter's had a thing for Chang since fourth year, you know. It's fine, I mean, it leaves me cold, really. I mean, I prefer him to suffer for eternity, but... whatever. I don't care.'

'Well, he seemed to be suffering.' Pansy smirked, sitting a little straighter. 'Get this: Roger Davies told Adrian they had a fight in the middle of Madam Puddifoot's tea shop. He said Cho was crying and that she screamed at Potter.'

'Screamed?' Draco breathed.

'Apparently,' Pansy jeered, 'he'd planned to meet Hermione straight after he met with Cho. So Cho yelled at him, "How many more girls are you hooking up with today?"' Pansy was shrieking with laughter now. 'Everyone heard! And I mean everyone. But the best thing–! Guess what Potter did, Draco?'

'Did he declare her his love?' Draco drawled. 'That's what he usually does, you see, when–'

'He laughed.'

Draco's mouth fell open. Pansy threw her head in her neck laughing.

Slowly, a wide grin bloomed on Draco's face. He felt a weird mix of fondness and malicious glee.

Draco couldn't remember Harry ever openly laughing at him. It seemed like a win.

. . .

The following Saturday was the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, which Potter would not be playing. Once or twice, Draco pointed his binoculars at the Gryffindor stand just to gloat at the crumpled figure of the fallen celebrity, hunched between his friends, watching the game with unconcealed misery and resentment.

During the game, there'd been a moment when the Snitch had been fluttering near the Beater's ankle, and Potter'd sat up straight, clearly spotting it at the same time as Draco, who then enjoyed himself very much watching Potter's clenched fists and jaws. It must have been immensely frustrating to watch your team lose while knowing you could have won, if only you were allowed to play – if only you hadn't beaten up your perfectly lovely ex-boyfriend.

'Ha ha!'

It was hard to say what the funniest thing about the match was: Draco supposed it was a close-run contest between Weasley's fourteenth failed save, one of the new Beaters missing the Bludger but hitting Angelina Johnson in the mouth with his bat, and the other new Beater shrieking and falling backward off his broom as Zacharias Smith zoomed at him carrying the Quaffle.

Wonder of wonders, Gryffindor only lost by ten points: Ginny Weasley managed to catch the Snitch, so that the final score was two hundred and forty versus two hundred and thirty.

Ron Weasley had left the pitch to another booming chorus of "Weasley Is Our King" sung with great gusto by the Slytherins, who were now favourites to win the Quidditch Cup.

. . .

On Monday morning, the post owls were greeted more avidly than usual. It seemed more people had subscribed to the Daily Prophet since the big Azkaban break-out and were eager for more news on the subject. There'd been many reported sightings, but still none of the prisoners had been caught.

Draco gave the delivery owl a Knut and lazily unfolded his newspaper when he heard a noise coming from across the hall.

There was a small commotion at the Gryffindor table. When Draco looked up, there were four, five – more and more owls landing on the table.

'Potter,' he grumbled, accidentally crumpling the paper in his fist, as the whole of the Great Hall leaned forward to watch another seven owls landing amongst the first ones, screeching, hooting, and flapping their wings.

'What's going on?' Pansy loudly asked, turning in her seat to watch. 'Hey, what's Luna doing at the Gryffindor table?'

Draco had to strain every last one of his muscles to keep himself from going over there.

'Umbridge is walking,' Zabini casually reported. Being the tallest of them all gave him a natural overview.

Making a show of reading his newspaper, Draco pretended not to care. He didn't process a single word he read, as he was listening carefully to Zabini's reports.

'She took something from them,' said Zabini. 'A magazine?'

'A magazine?' Pansy repeated. 'What magazine?'

Zabini shrugged and helped himself to some orange juice. Tracey leaned over the table to shout at Pucey. 'Adrian, darling, be a doll and ask your Gryffindor connection what's going on! Adrian! Stop polishing that broom for one minute! Look around for once, love!'

'Tracey, shut up,' Draco snarled. 'He doesn't care.'

'Oh, he cares,' said Tracey passionately and shouted louder.

Adrian turned her back towards her.

'ADRIAN!'

'Okay, now you're just harassing him,' said Pansy, putting a firm hand on Tracey's shoulder to bring her down. 'You know he's not interested, babe. He just prefers brooms, it's nothing personal.'

'It is personal,' Tracey grumbled, but then her face fell. 'He personally broke my heart…'

The girls aaaw'ed and simpered, except for Pansy, who got up. 'No worries, ladies, I'll find out what happened,' she said, and so she did.

While waiting in front of the Arithmancy classroom, Draco got yanked away from his friends. Turning around, ready to hex, he saw Pansy.

'It's bad,' she hissed, looking paler than ever.

Draco lowered his wand, trying not to be alarmed. He'd never seen Pansy look so stricken before.

'Potter did an interview,' she said. 'Luna got me a copy. It's her dad's magazine.'

Draco laughed derisively. 'The Quibbler? You're joking, I'm not gonna worry about that nutjob's little fantasy rag.'

With a stony expression Pansy held up the magazine. Harry Potter's face was grinning sheepishly at Draco from the front cover. In large red letters across his picture were the words: "HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN."

Draco snatched it out of her hands to flip to the interview, scanning Potter's words until he saw it.

"Malfoy."

Potter had named Draco's father as one of the Death Eaters.

Other names were there too: Goyle, Crabbe, Nott… He'd outed them all. The floor felt unsteady beneath Draco's feet.

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!

'He – he…' Draco steadied himself against the wall, whispering, 'What has he done?'

'He ratted you all out, is what he did,' Pansy replied hotly. 'Nationally. In print.' She lowered her voice. 'And Luna helped him. My Luna.'

Draco rubbed his face and neck, trying and failing to find an explanation. 'This had to take effort,' he stammered. 'Did he – Well, he must have... He deliberately took the time to betray me, didn't he?'

He couldn't stop staring at the words: "I saw the Death Eaters. I can name them. Malfoy, MacNair, Avery, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle." There was hardly a pause: "I can name them. Malfoy." Draco's family was the first one he named, the very first. No doubt, no hesitation…

'Draco?' Pansy's voice sounded far away.

I can name them. Malfoy.

'He doesn't care.'

Pansy took the magazine and put it away with a stealthy look on Professor Vector, arriving at the classroom. Draco felt numb.

The lesson went by without his attention. In fact, the biggest part of the morning went by without Draco hearing a word.

'Luna's over the moon,' Pansy hissed at him on their way to their first lesson after morning break. 'She says no copy of The Quibbler ever sold out faster and that her dad's reprinting. She's so excited, I don't think she even noticed how angry I was. She says people seem even more interested in this than in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. Merlin, I could have jinxed her.'

'Yeah,' Draco replied mechanically.

He couldn't think straight. He knew Harry was careless and craved attention – and Snape already told the Malfoys that Potter ratted them out the second he got back from the maze… but this? Draco couldn't wrap his head around the size of the betrayal. It was bad enough that Harry told a handful of people when he was in shock and they pressured him to talk, but to make arrangements to let the entire country know, while having all his wits about him… that was something else entirely.

Did he hate Draco that much? 'Well, he's – he's definitely not my homeboy anymore,' Draco mumbled to himself.

During Herbology, Draco was distracted by his ring, still thumping out that traitor's heartbeat. Until now, Draco'd kept it on, because it was still his family's ring, but today the beating heart was an unwelcome reminder of how wrong he'd been. In a moment of rage, Draco yanked it off and very nearly hurled it through the glass of the greenhouse. After taking a breath, though, he regained the sensibility to tuck it away in his bag instead. It was a much less flashy solution.

'Let's have lunch in the common room,' Zabini proposed after their last lesson of the morning ended, aiming for a casual tone. 'I'm certain we can get a house-elf to serve us there.'

Draco, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott followed him through the castle. Zabini nudged Draco in the right direction two or three times and after a while, he found himself sitting in between Crabbe and Goyle on his bed, while Nott and Zabini sat on Crabbe's bed, facing them.

They were silent.

Draco was still processing what Harry had done, while Zabini's eyes flicked from one to the other. He was the only one eating, chewing up a salad with great crunching noises. Nott was picking at a sandwich, but seemed rather nauseous. Crabbe and Goyle only ate two or three chicken drumsticks each.

'What do you think will happen?' Zabini broke the silence.

They were startled by the sudden sound. Draco glanced at Nott, but saw his own question reflected back at him. None of them knew.

'Think they'll get arrested?' asked Goyle.

'Can't,' said Crabbe, licking his fingers. 'Dad says not without proof.'

'Isn't this proof?' snarled Nott.

Crabbe shrugged, helping himself to a third drumstick.

'Do they have the Quibbler in France?' Goyle asked, sounding worried.

'No,' said Draco firmly, if only to keep his friend from whining about his boring sister for the next twelve hours.

'At least Umbridge banned it now,' said Zabini optimistically.

Draco and Nott shot him an incredulous look.

At some point the bell rang and they trudged on to yet another lesson. Nott walked slower and slower and when Draco glanced around, he spotted numbers flashing through the air: 2,9.

'Piss it,' Nott whispered.

Draco'd read up on Nott's secret disease. He knew what the numbers meant now and 2,9 was bad. He'd also remembered what Nott had been eating when Draco'd found him alone at their pool party. So Draco took a Pumpkin Pasty out of his bag, wordlessly offering it.

Nott blinked in surprise. 'Oh… Thanks.'

Draco was almost certain Nott carried his own snacks to cure hypos, and he was certain he didn't need Draco to take care of him, and that he might, in fact, launch into a spitting rage if he knew Draco carried snacks around purely for his diabetic friend, but Draco kept taking them from the breakfast table anyway. He would have preferred if he knew how to teleport food, so he could get Nott something freshly baked from the kitchen, instead of a few stale pasties, if only to impress his friend. Until Yaxley taught them how, though, Draco had to make do.

He looked around and saw a bench along the corridor wall. 'You go ahead,' he told Crabbe and Goyle, 'Nott and I need to check our essay.'

Nott stuffed his face with the Pasty like he'd been starving for years, and flopped down next to Draco on the bench. 'Should've eaten,' he grumbled, his hands shaking. 'Stupid.'

'C'est la vie,' Draco drawled, dropping his head in his hands. He felt exhausted.

The rest of the day passed quietly. They kept their heads down and went to bed early. All in all, it was not a good day for the pureblood children. It took a night's sleep and a letter from their parents the next morning to get them back on their feet.

Draco's father wasn't worried and neither was Nott's mum. Crabbe and Goyle's parents had short letters filled with arguments that made no sense, but worked to ease the boys.

'We are an ancient family,' Draco's father wrote, 'and we make more donations in a month than the Ministry can collect through taxes in a year. We are a well-established name in Ministry circles. It is going to take a little more to get the Malfoys into trouble than some unhinged child filling the local rag of a delusional fool with some crackpot story. Of course, people have asked us questions, but they merely seek affirmation that the boy is lying, which I can provide effortlessly. "The child also claims he can talk to snakes," I tell them, and they immediately back away, apologizing.'

Draco snorted, and read on.

'Your mother is concerned about you. I assured her you could hold your own, but she still wants to know if the other students are bothering you over this. If they are, tell them we have six escaped Death Eaters staying at our guest wing who owe us a favour, it will give me a laugh. Your mother says not to talk back to them. She says they will forget all of this in a week and that you should lay low until then. I trust you will make wise decisions.'

Draco sniggered. He didn't think it would be a wise decision to follow his father's advice in this, although it would have been funny. He wondered if it was true that the prisoners were staying at the manor. Aunty Bel would be, but he wasn't certain about any others. His father's sense of humour could be slightly ambiguous at times.

The four Slytherins – Crabbe, Goyle, Nott and Draco – followed their parents' advice and laid low. In the afternoon they tucked themselves away in the library to work on their essays about Partial Vanishment together.

It was hard to concentrate. Crabbe kept coming up with vindictive plans, which Goyle heartily backed up and Nott tirelessly dissected to point out each and every flaw. He was showing off, if you asked Draco. Admittedly, with success: Draco was hanging on his every word. The boy was a strategic mastermind.

In the end, Draco became aware of his trance and shut them all up. 'Our parents will get revenge, Crabbe. We are far too rich to get our own hands dirty. And stop drawing–'

'He's here,' Goyle hissed and they all turned around.

The one and only Harry Potter was browsing the shelves. Goyle cracked his knuckle, but Draco could hardly look at the guy and averted his gaze.

'We will get him,' he whispered at Crabbe. 'My father has a plan and it will not end well for Potter, I promise you that.'

. . .

Life got back to normal surprisingly quickly. One way the process was sped up was by Draco and his friends flawlessly picking up where they left off to make fun of the Gryffindors' abysmal performance during their match against Hufflepuff. The Slytherins were singing "Weasley Is Our King" so loudly and frequently that by sundown Filch had banned it out of sheer irritation.

Draco was patrolling the castle for his prefect duty one evening, when he got spooked by Professor Umbridge popping up from around a corner.

'Ah, Draco, there you are,' she said in her breathy, falsely sweet voice. 'I need your help with something. Can you gather a group of trustworthy students and meet me in my office?' She posed it like a question, but didn't wait for a reply. 'Ask miss Parkinson, and that burl– er… strong girl in your class, quiet girl –'

'Bulstrode?'

Her slack mouth stretched into a smile. 'That's the one. And gather a few strong boys too. Maybe that Quidditch Captain, he looks capable.'

'Of course,' Draco said, and he hurried back to the dungeon to rally his friends.

He found Pansy, Bulstrode and Montague, who brought his friend Warrington along too, and Crabbe and Goyle followed Draco automatically.

When Draco knocked on the door of Umbridge's office, her sugary voice said, 'Come in,' and Draco entered the room horrifically unprepared for the monstrosity of an office they found inside.

The surfaces had all been draped in lacy covers and cloths. There were several vases full of dried flowers, each residing on its own doily, and on one of the walls was a collection of ornamental plates, each decorated with a large technicolour kitten wearing a different bow around its neck. These were so foul that Draco stared at them, transfixed, until Professor Umbridge spoke.

'Ah Draco, that was quick.'

Draco started and looked around. He had not noticed her at first because she was wearing a luridly flowered set of robes that blended only too well with the tablecloth on the desk behind her. In the wall behind the desk were a Firebolt and two Cleansweeps, chained and padlocked to a stout iron peg. It made Draco smirk with malicious glee.

'You brought your friends,' she simpered. 'Good, good. Now, follow me, children.'

'Children?' mouthed Pansy as they followed their professor, and Draco tapped his forehead. She muffled her laughter while Umbridge spoke.

'One of Potter's friends tipped me off that Potter will be meeting his illegal society tonight at a room on the seventh floor,' she told them, with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice. 'That isn't allowed. We need to catch them red-handed. Now, my informant couldn't say exactly where this room is, so I want you to spread out over the floor.'

Draco looked up in surprise at the clueless faces of his friends and even his professor, as he knew exactly what room on the seventh floor Potter would be using to hold a secret meeting.

He also happened to know the perfect hiding place near it, since he used it the year before to hook up with a certain fallen celebrity who didn't want the world to know about his supposed infatuation with Draco.

The group split up, and Draco rushed towards the Room of Requirements, where he snuck into a niche beneath an ugly dragon-shaped vase to await his enemy's arrival. Not a second too soon, it turned out, because right that moment, a door blew open and Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors pelted away from it at top speed.

Holding his breath, Draco clutched his wand and waited for the right Gryffindor to pass him. He needed – Umbridge would need the leader.

The hurrying footsteps died down and for a moment Draco worried he'd missed his chance, but then –

A glimpse of flying heels and messy black hair, running towards the boys' bathroom. Draco leaped up and fired.

'AAARGH!' Potter fell spectacularly, skidding along on his front for six feet before coming to a halt.

Draco laughed. 'Trip Jinx, Potter!'

Potter rolled over on the floor to look furiously up at him. 'I remember it, Malfoy!'

'Hey Professor – PROFESSOR! I've got one!'

'Not just anyone, though, am I?' shouted The Boy Who Lived. He tried to get up, so Draco pulled him back, using the jinx he'd learned from Moody – adapt and overcome, Father always said.

Frustrated, Potter slouched back. 'Whatever happened to: you're such a big deal, Potter!'

Furious, Draco jerked at his wand, gratified at the sight of Potter flinching in pain. 'It vanished with that interview.'

Umbridge came bustling round the far corner, breathless but wearing a delighted smile. 'It's him!' she said jubilantly at the sight of Potter on the floor. 'Excellent, Draco, excellent, oh, very good – fifty points to Slytherin!'

'We're all so proud, Draconius,' scorned Potter and it took Draco everything he had to ignore him.

'I'll take him from here… stand up, Potter!'

Draco pointedly looked away as Potter got to his feet and Umbridge seized his arm in a vice-like grip, beaming broadly to Draco. 'You hop along –'

'Yeah, hop along, teacher's pet,' muttered Potter.

'– and see if you can round up any more of them, Draco. Tell the others to look in the library – anybody out of breath – check the bathrooms, Miss Parkinson can do the girls' ones – off you go.'

Draco decidedly didn't take a second look at Potter as he swaggered off.

Then Potter started shouting. 'Low blow, Malfoy!'

Draco rounded the corner, heart pumping and blood boiling.

'EVEN FOR YOU!'

He winced.

. . .

Another sleepless night drove Draco to the brink of insanity. It had felt so good, yanking at Potter's leg, watching him wince. He had felt triumphant, drinking in the anger in Potter's eyes. It had been bloody marvellous, the cherry on top of his prefect career.

So then why – why in the name of the good lord Merlin – why did his mind choose to replay exclusively that last second of their encounter? Why couldn't he stop thinking about Harry's voice, breaking with betrayal? About that very last "Even for you!"

The little crack in "e-ven" and the even tinier one in "y-ou," that's what did it to Draco. That's what kept him up. It showed him something he did not understand. As if it tried to break through Draco's thick skull and Draco refused to let it.

Throwing caution to the wind, he thrashed out of the common room, desperate for a bit of fresh air. Sleeping below lake-level used to be Draco's favourite thing about their common room. It made him feel safe, like a cat in a small space. It felt different when trying to escape his own mind, though; he couldn't even open a window for air.

Yet another thing Potter ruined, Draco thought to himself as he walked up the stairs to the entrance hall and strode off to the courtyard. Harry J. Potter: spoiling fun since 1980.

When he reached the courtyard at last, he leaned against the ancient walls of the castle to inhale the night air. Sliding down the wall to the ground, he buried his hands in his hair.

'You alright?'

'Putain…'

He hadn't seen anyone around, and through the dark he still couldn't make out who the voice belonged to.

As he'd been pounding his own head with his fist, it might be unconvincing to reply he was all fine and dandy. When he kept quiet, the other person shuffled towards him.

'Piss off,' he snarled into the dark.

Stepping into the light of the torches lining the castle wall, the figure turned out to be Millicent Bulstrode.

He exhaled; she never said anything, ever, so his secret was safe.

She sat down next to him and held a small contraption out to him. When Draco moved his hands away from his face, he recognized it as a smoking pipe. The herbs inside the chamber were smouldering, shedding a faint light on her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

The strong smell made Draco back away, crinkling his nose.

'Calming herbs,' said Bulstrode softly. She leaned her head against the stone wall and closed her eyes. She did seem entirely calm.

Draco didn't hesitate. Pulling his sleeve over his hand, he cleaned the pipe's bit before putting it between his lips and breathing in.

'Into your lungs,' Bulstrode instructed.

He breathed into his lungs and felt like he inhaled a handful of smouldering ashes. The smoke burnt his throat and his windpipe, rendering him gasping for oxygen, and, for a moment, Draco made peace with his untimely demise. Choking on calming herbs; he considered it a fitting way to go.

Coughing up his insides to the point of retching, he handed the pipe back to the girl. 'Rubbish,' he managed to squeak through desperate gasps for air.

Bulstrode didn't react in the slightest to Draco's trauma. She took a deep drag from the pipe and kept the smoke inside her lungs for seconds on end, like it felt good to her to burn up her intestines, before slowly pushing out the smoke through her nose like a dragon.

Draco couldn't stand it. He wasn't weaker than Bulstrode. He needed to feel like her. So he snatched the pipe from her to try again, insistent on giving it a fair chance. If those herbs could silence his mind for even a second, if they could make him feel even half as calm as Bulstrode looked, well, it might be worth dying for.

And so, that night, they sat in the dark, Bulstrode half asleep and Draco coughing his lungs out. Until, at a certain point, time seemed to have stretched out, like a mountain, and he forgot the entire existence of the pipe, or his lungs.

The stars above looked hypnotizing. They were winking at him.

'Look at those stars,' he whispered to Bulstrode, careful not to break the stars' hypnosis or whatever they had going up there.

Bulstrode slowly opened her eyes, and together they looked up at the stars.

Draco's mind went completely blank. He could breathe. Breathe, with his aching lungs. He didn't worry.

All was as it was meant to be.