Chapter 12: Rough Go

A note arrived for Draco at lunch:

I have an emergency governors' meeting today. I want to see you at 3:00.

It wasn't signed, but Draco knew Father's hand. He dreaded all afternoon what awaited him up in room 7F.

His father fixed him with a glare as soon as he stepped into the room.

"You could save it," Draco tentatively tried. "I already spoke with Professor Snape this morning. I have detention, and he told me—"

The door clicked decisively shut behind Draco with a flick of Father's wand. Draco took a step backward when his father advanced on him.

"Just what were you thinking?" Father hissed. "Can you really not help yourself?"

Head bowed and hands retracted inside his jumper sleeves, Draco shrugged. His entire face felt heavy, primarily his eyes.

"You wouldn't believe the looks I received from the other governors during the meeting. Least of all, the way Dumbledore regarded me. We didn't discuss your little comment, but of course he knows all about it. What exactly do I need to do to ensure you don't embarrass me or our family name on this scale again?"

"Nothing," Draco whispered.

"What were you even doing there?" Father snapped. "Why did you have to be involved?"

"I didn't." Draco's eyes welled and blurred.

"Then why didn't you just mind your own business? Did you not learn a thing after last term what injecting yourself into these sorts of situations leads to? It's never to anything good. Do you hear me?"

Draco nodded.

"Tell me you hear me."

"I do." Draco's voice went thick. "I'm sorry."

"Well, that remains to be seen. I thought you were sorry after everything to do with that Granger girl. I certainly didn't think I'd be dealing with this again after how horrible the summer holiday was."

"Like it was horrible for you!" Anger swelled up behind Draco's guilt. "What do you care? I think you like being mean to me!"

Father scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous—"

"I'm not!" Draco hardly recognized his voice between the volume, tone, and pitch of it. "I've already gotten in trouble! So why are you yelling at me?"

Tears obscured Draco's vision. While he gasped for breath and wiped at his stubbornly-wet cheeks, he heard Father sigh. "I'm not yelling at you."

"It feels like it." Draco sniffled. "Why is everyone so mean to me?"

"Probably because you're not being a very pleasant boy right now."

Father might as well have plunged a knife through Draco's heart. His breath caught, and he spun on his heel for the door. Draco fell deaf to Father calling after him.

The nearest toilets were down a set of stairs. Draco wished he could make it all the way to the dorm before this hit, but he just couldn't. He already gasped for air, trembling like a leaf.

Draco locked himself into a stall. He cut his upset abruptly when the toilet door squeaked. Holding his breath, he expected to hear the raucous laughter of several older boys. Instead, a single pair of shoes clicked against the stone floor. They approached.

A sigh came from the other side of the stall door. "Draco."

It was Father. Draco sat deadly still.

"I know you're in there. Come out."

Draco was too embarrassed to meet his father's gaze when he did. He kept his chin down. It became harder to avoid Father when he kneeled. Draco glanced at Father when he took hold of his forearms.

"What's the matter?" Father asked. "Why do these things keep happening?"

Draco's face crumpled, and he sniffled. "I don't know."

"This isn't like you. This was never like you. I know that you know better, and I know that you know I don't like being cross with you."

Draco sniffled again. "I'm just not having a good go at it."

"At what?"

"I don't know. I'm just not happy. I'm angry all the time."

"Is it because of what happened with the Weasley twins?" Father asked. "Is it the summer holiday?"

"I don't know," Draco repeated, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. "Maybe."

"You've been through a lot lately."

Draco nodded.

"This behaviour isn't helping your situation." Father kept a light grip, rubbing Draco's left arm idly with his thumb through the jumper. "It's hard enough to defend you calling someone a Mudblood without someone attacking peoples' pets and bandying about the Chamber of Secrets. This is not something to piggyback on, Draco. You need to leave it alone. You need to keep your head down, and you need to let things get sorted as they will. Shooting your mouth is only going to make you a suspect—or worse, a target. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Draco figured he understood more than anyone else ever could, after what the Weasley twins had done to him.

Father looked back over his shoulder toward the toilet door. In the silence that fell, Draco grew curious what Father might want to say that required he make certain they were alone.

He dropped his voice to a whisper when he turned back to Draco. "Keep this to yourself—and I mean it—but the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before."

Draco's eyes widened.

"It was before things grew so touchy around Mudbloods," Father said. "One died, though. The student responsible was expelled, and the creature was removed from the castle."

"Who did it?" Draco quickly asked. "What was the creature?"

"I'm not telling you that. It's all right to be curious, but it won't look good if you know too much about it. It'll be obvious that you learned it from me. I don't need anymore accusatory looks from the other governors, and certainly not Dumbledore. I just want you to understand that there can't be a creature involved this time. It's going to be a student responsible."

While Draco considered all of that, his heart rate picked up. "So the Chamber's real, then."

Father stood back up. "It's nothing more significant now than an empty classroom. Your grandfather told me about it shortly before he died. It opened during his time here."

"You really won't tell me who did it?" Draco let a little whine creep into his tone.

"It doesn't matter." Father squeezed Draco's shoulders. "It'll sort itself out either way. There is no such thing as Slytherin's heir. Not literally, anyway. That bloodline ended when the last Gaunt died."

"Ellie Selwyn and Flint were talking about the Gaunts this morning," Draco said. "Flint was going to write his father to see if the one was still in Azkaban."

"Let him find that out on his own, if he's so curious. All right?" Father said. "All of this is just between you and me."

Draco nodded. "So the thing about the heir on the wall. . .what's that mean, then?"

"An heir in spirit, perhaps." Father shrugged. "I won't be shocked if someone is doing this out of spite for what's become of Hogwarts in recent years. Dumbledore believes it all fine and good to adopt an open-arms policy to those from Muggle families, but what about when things start happening like what you endured at the wands of the Weasley twins? It was no different during my student days that the young Slytherins relied on the older ones for things like protection and guidance. You'll experience the opposite side of that in a few years. Especially when I was a prefect, you should have seen some of the treatment I had to correct against younger Slytherins."

"Like what?" Draco asked.

"I would rather not tell you. What I'm saying is that it's most likely an older Slytherin student who feels incensed by the sorts of things you've been dealing with. I don't think it's escaped anyone's notice that the animosity toward Slytherin house has been worse than usual lately. Ask anyone in the years above you. It didn't only start when you arrived here. It's been like this to some degree ever since the war ended, really."

"Professor Snape said something like that to me once." Draco narrowed his eyes in thought. "Something about the house coming back to itself."

"He would know. He inherited a mess when he became Head. I don't think it would be in half as good of shape underneath anyone else."

"Maybe not." Draco bunched his lips all off to one side. "He gave me detention for saying Mudblood in the corridor last night."

"Good." Although Father's voice was stern, there was a note of humour in it as well. "You earned it."

Despite his better wishes, Draco smiled just a tiny little bit. He scuffed his shoe against the stone floor, and easily melted into a hug when Father pulled him close. Resting his head against his father's chest calmed him. He squeezed back tightly.

"Do you feel better?" Father asked.

Draco nodded.

"Good. Shall we get out of this toilet, then?"

Draco headed to Snape's office shortly before eight o'clock for his first detention.

"Good evening," Snape greeted him. "Do you recall what I said about how I would handle subsequent detentions, the last time you had one?"

"Erm. . ."

"The lines you write tonight will not be as concise as those ones were."

Sure enough, rather than writing 'I will respect my fellow Slytherins' two-hundred times, Draco wrote 'I will not disgrace the name of Slytherin house by yelling slurs in the corridors'. It was nearly ten o'clock when Draco returned to the common room, massaging his hand.

It still hurt the next morning when Draco headed with Crabbe and Goyle for the Great Hall. The tense air and quiet atmosphere in there made him forget all about the residual ache in his palm.

"Everyone's scared, I suppose," Draco whispered to Goyle.

Everyone but Slytherin house, that was. It was quite impossible to miss the degree of animosity that came toward their end of the Hall. Draco had long-adjusted to glares and other sorts of disapproving looks from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. They were impossible to miss now.

It continued in Defence class. Lockhart seemed impervious to how broad the divide ran between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw halves of the classroom. His grin sagged a little when trying to draw volunteers for a recreation about a jarvey that had called him a nincompoop.

"How about someone from the Ravenclaw side of the room?" Lockhart said. "Come now, don't be shy! You all did so well on Friday! How about Ms Li? I'll have you out of your shell by Christmas, you can bet on your life!"

Sue Li's eyes flickered toward where Draco and Nott waited for someone to join them. "No thank you."

"Ah, but you were so brave when your group faced off against the—"

"I would really rather not, Professor," she said. "Sorry."

Whether for his ego or the sake of just getting on, Lockhart carried on with students willing to participate. He seemed cheered by lesson's end. Draco couldn't tell if he ignored the tension in the room, or was oblivious to it.

"Bit ridiculous, really," Nott said to Draco loud enough in the corridor for Boot, Corner, and Goldstein ahead of them to hear. "You know, making Slytherin house out to be a bunch of plague rats because of that stupid cat."

"Is it?" Boot snapped and wheeled around. "Can't recall it was a Ravenclaw or Gryffindor shouting off about who ought mind themselves!"

"Say, Malfoy," Nott carried on. "Do you recall the end of last term, when someone tried to steal something that Dumbledore had hidden in the castle?"

"Yes?" Draco furrowed his brow.

"You said your father knew Quirrell back when he was at Hogwarts," Nott replied. "Which house did you say Quirrell belonged to, again?"

Draco smirked, catching on. So too did Boot, Corner, and Goldstein, judging by their matched glowers. "Right, yes, he happened to have been a Ravenclaw."

"But how can that be?" Nott feigned an alarmed form of confusion. "I thought only Slytherins were evil!"

"As it turns out," Draco said, "that might not be true."

"Well, let's not discuss this where we might offend the sensibilities of students from a different house." Nott knocked Corner's shoulder with his as they passed. "Especially not some Ravenclaws."

"So what were you doing there in the corridor then, Malfoy?" Goldstein shot at their backs. "Carrying on some family tradition?"

"Oh, please." Draco walked briefly backward. "Why don't you ask Potter? After killing the Dark Lord and doing away with Quirrell, I can't imagine Mrs Norris was much of a challenge."

Draco only really meant that in jest. He couldn't tell if he'd introduced the idea to the school or just fanned the flames, but the whispers of Potter's name had changed in tone. As much as Draco loved to no longer deal with Potter's celebrity at every waking moment, he honestly didn't think he could subscribe to the theory of him being Slytherin's heir—or the student pretending to be.

He preferred to listen in on the older students, to see what they might think.

"The thing is," Cyril Meakin was saying, "we're all accounted for. The only Slytherin not was, well—" Draco resisted rolling his eyes when everyone glanced at him, "—but Snape's vouched for Malfoy, so. . ."

"Wouldn't that be so like someone from the other houses to blame us, though?" Alice Yaxley replied. "Which of them would even question that someone from Slytherin is responsible? The Chamber of Secrets is covered in Hogwarts: A History. Anybody could have read up on that. Anybody could have had a score to settle with Mrs Norris. That cat is a right nasty little piece of work. I refuse to even pretend I'm sad she's not prowling about anymore. It's a welcome break."

"And Filch has only gotten nastier," Awarnach said, his arms tightly crossed. "I have a detention with him tonight because I sneezed when walking past his post outside the second-floor toilets. Bunch of bollocks."

"So what about Potter, then?" Winifred Scott asked. "Could it really be him?"

Alice and Meakin shared a significant glance, which piqued Draco's interest.

"See. . .it was all the prefects' responsibility to account for their houses. We had to sort out who might have been missing during the Halloween feast," Meakin said. "The only ones missing were Potter, Ronald Weasley, and that Hermione Granger. They apparently went to a Deathday party down here in the dungeons."

"We asked the Bloody Baron, and it's true." Alice nodded.

"But when we met up with the other house prefects, Heads of House, and Head Boy and Girl to discuss the matter, Percy Weasley was acting funny about the whole thing," Meakin continued. "I get it, I suppose. He's got such a big stick up his arse normally anyway, and his family's had enough trouble lately without that Ronald being involved in this now. Still, I don't know. He's really off about the whole thing."

Draco didn't have much time to think about all of it on his own time as he prepared for his first Quidditch match. Saturday was fast approaching, and practices went late into the evening. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had both broken a long-standing tradition: neither would offer their time slots to Slytherin as a courtesy.

"We'll make do," Flint said.

It seemed like no time at all before Draco found himself putting on his kit with the other boys. The murmur of people filling the stands accompanied the occasional shudder of the pitch structure. This was not the time for Draco's nerves to emerge.

"You all know what to do," Flint told them as they stood. "Malfoy, I give you full permission to smack Potter on the back of the head if he swallows the Snitch again."

Draco appreciated the laugh. He followed the other boys out onto the pitch, feeling about half the size of Pucey, the smallest next to him on the team. The amount of wild applause, shouting, and stomping made Draco want to toss. He felt marginally better to see the Gryffindor team look just as nervous as he felt. Draco scrutinized Potter to see where he fell on all this. The steely resolve in his eye was matched by a set jaw and firm grip on his broomstick handle.

"On my whistle," Madam Hooch yelled. "Three. . .two. . ."

Draco shot upward into the air quickly enough that his stomach needed to catch up. He and Potter left the Beaters, Chasers, and Keepers behind.

"All right there, Scarhead?" Draco yelled at Potter as he passed him by.

He settled into his usual patrol of the pitch, about fifty feet above the ground. Even with all the extra noise and energy, things were starting to feel familiar again. Draco let his eyes fall out of focus as he watched for a glint of gold somewhere that wasn't someone's wristwatch. He idly listened to the match commentary. Slytherin, ten-zero. Slytherin, twenty-zero. Slytherin, thirty-zero. Penalty shot to Gryffindor. Saved by Bletchley. Flint with the Quaffle. Pucey, Flint, Pucey, Montague, Flint—Slytherin, forty-zero.

Draco just about panicked, startled out of his focus, when Madam Hooch's whistle went after Slytherin reached a sixty point lead. A lack of roar from three-quarters of the stands meant the match wasn't over, so Potter hadn't caught the Snitch. Draco yielded to a wave of Flint's arm, hailing him down to the ground.

"Who called time out?" Draco asked when he joined the rest of the team.

Flint laughed, grin wide as he wiped rain from his forehead. "Have you not been paying attention?"

"I've been looking for the Snitch," Draco half-snapped, offended.

"One of the Bludgers has it out for Potter." Flint pointed with his jaw over to where the Gryffindors all huddled. "The Weasley twins haven't been able to focus on the other one at all."

Draco looked back over his shoulder, instinctively sneering at Potter when their gazes met. "What's that all about? The Bludger?"

"Dunno, but I'll take it. Doesn't look like Madam Hooch is gonna call or postpone the game over it, so. . ."

They were back in the air after Madam Hooch conferred with the Gryffindors. Draco headed back for where he'd left off, squinting through the sheets of rain that now fell. Every once in a while, a gale of wind would kick up and blow a wash of it into Draco's face.

Maybe because Flint had brought Potter's Bludger issues to Draco's attention, Draco couldn't ignore it as the game progressed. Or, really, it could be that Potter was suddenly everywhere across the pitch, struggling to outrun or outmaneuver the Bludger. Draco about considered putting his hand up to his eyes to get Potter out of his line of sight, but that didn't bode well for possibly sighting the Snitch. The crumby weather already made it difficult enough.

Potter zipped past above Draco, earning a bellyful of laughter when he performed a pirouette.

"Training for the ballet, Potter?" he called.

Off he went again—and then he was careening toward Draco.

"What the—POTTER!" Draco roared after dodging, but Potter couldn't be deterred from his dive. Panicked that maybe Potter had seen something gold Draco hadn't, he took chase. Potter sat oddly on his broom—oddly enough that Draco pulled out of his dive. He made to resume his search, then felt the bottom of his stomach fall out to spot something gold—

—In Potter's hand, where he laid sprawled out on the pitch.

"Bloody fuck!" Draco spat under his breath as Madam Hooch's whistle blew and the stadium lit up.

Draco's fury was matched by Flint's on the ground.

"The Snitch was right there," Flint shot at him. "You could've had it, Malfoy."

"What do you mean, right there?" Draco snapped back. "Potter about knocked me off my broom—"

"It was right by your ear. You didn't even hear its wings beating?"

"No, I didn't hear anything at all! I couldn't see anything either over Potter flying all over the place—"

"You didn't even have to! It came right to you, and you missed it!"

"Why were you watching me anyway? Keep your eyes on your own ball—"

"Hey, hey, hey." Bole stepped between them. "Cool it. It's not the end of the world."

Draco ducked his chin anyway while following the other boys to the changing room. It was a little stiff in there until Montague cleared his throat.

"We still only lost by ten points," he quietly pointed out.

Flint's jutting jaw gradually pulled back into place. Draco avoided his gaze while being studied.

"Do better next time," Flint said to him.

"I will," Draco snapped.

"Good. Because I know you can."

That was about as close to an apology as Draco figured he would get from Flint. He still took the whole business hard, despite the litany of things back in the common room that strove to make him feel better. A long, hot shower was the first thing. Slytherin still celebrated, because they'd done better this season than last against Gryffindor. Potter had beaten Terence Higgs to the Snitch as well, and Higgs was now Reserve Seeker for the Wanderers.

Draco fell into a very deep sleep when he went to bed. He struggled to come out of it when someone was saying his name. As Draco came closer to consciousness, he realized that all the dorm torches were lit. His bed curtains had been opened.

He pulled his blanket up over his head. "What's going on?"

"Sorry, Malfoy," came Stanley Macmillan's voice. "I need you to wake up for a minute or two."

The other boys in Draco's dorm all looked just as tired and confused. Crabbe's hair stood up on one side. Goyle yawned widely. Nott leaned toward his pillow while sitting up, as though it pulled on his head with an invisible piece of string. Blaise's eyes were closed and his mouth open as he too sat with his legs pretzeled.

"There's been another attack in the school," Macmillan said. "The prefects are making sure everyone's accounted for."

"Well, I'm here," Draco replied, grumpy. "Can I go back to—wait. There's been an attack? Where?"

"Don't worry about it. I've got you all checked off. Go back to sleep."

It was a little difficult on the tail of that. Draco tossed and turned for a good half-hour before finally drifting back off. He woke up properly when light had yet to come down through the lake into the dorm. Draco pulled on his dressing-gown and headed out into the common room.

Over half the house had already risen for the day, primarily the older years. Draco took a seat next to Flint. He sat in a group that contained Hazel Selwyn, who was already properly dressed for the day. Her eyes were puffy with fatigue.

Beside her, one end of Ellie's mouth twitched upward toward a smile. "What're you doing up, Draco? You should be sleeping in after your game yesterday."

"Flint's not," Draco replied through a yawn.

"He should be as well, though." Ellie reached over to push Flint's shoulder.

"Who was attacked?" Draco asked.

"No one you know," Hazel assured him. "Well, maybe. It was that first-year Gryffindor boy that's always trailing behind Harry Potter."

"With the stupid camera?"

"Yes, him. Colin Creevey."

Draco shrugged. "I take it he's not dead? I think there would have been a lot more panic to Macmillan when he poked us all awake in the night."

"Petrified again," Hazel said.

Abigail Slughorn and Andreas Belby sat with them as well. Abigail sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"So what's the going theory now?" she asked Hazel. "How can a student petrify another one like that? That seems like far too advanced magic to be taught at Hogwarts. I overheard Spencer say he was going to write Devon Bletchley, and see if anything like that ever came up leading to the NEWT exams."

"It's pointless, I bet." Belby folded his arms, the fine hair on them darkening sightly in the dim torchlight. "The impression I get is that the school staff is just as baffled. If even Dumbledore can't figure it out. . ."

"You know," Ellie said with a thoughtful hum. "This all started on Halloween, the day after every Defence class finished presenting their skits. Did anyone cover a creature capable of petrification? Like a gorgon?"

"That's not a bad lead to follow," Hazel replied.

"Gorgons don't petrify, though." Flint put a foot up against the tea table edge. "They turn people into stone. That's not the case here, is it?"

"No, they're just stiff."

Draco sat on the couch with his knees pulled up to his chest, and his arms wrapped around them. He lifted his cheek from where it rested on his kneecap. "There are other creatures that do things like that. You know—if you look them in the eyes. My group did basilisks."

"Those kill, don't they?" Abigail asked. "If you make eye contact?"

"Oh—yeah." Draco put his head back down. "I mean to say that maybe it's a different creature they're taking from."

"It might not be about eye contact, though," Belby supplied. "Maybe it's just a curse."

"One Dumbledore or McGonagall wouldn't know how to undo?" Abigail replied.

"A poison?" Draco suggested.

"Snape and Madam Pomfrey would have both already checked for that," Ellie said. "Plus, you'd think there'd have been some of it still on their lips, or something."

"Hm, yeah. . ."

Draco's interest in their conversation began to wane when the topic drifted off from the attack. With nothing he could contribute anymore, he really started to feel like a twelve year old sitting with a bunch of sixteen year olds.

Back in the dorm, the other four boys remained dead to the world. Draco crawled back into bed with a sigh. Now that dawn began to turn the dorm the colour of the lake, he didn't think he would manage to sleep. Far too many questions buzzed about in his mind.

Draco threw his blanket back off and snuck his trunk open to retrieve Tom's diary. They hadn't spoken since Draco's detention with Filch, but Draco found himself in a forgiving mood today. Father had told him that the Chamber of Secrets opened when Grandfather was at Hogwarts. That meant Tom had been around as well. Perhaps he had some insight.

After putting everything back the way it was in his trunk, Draco took the diary to his bed. Setting A History of Magic down as a makeshift writing surface and then opening his ink felt almost ritualistic at this point.

Draco flipped through the diary to see if Tom had written anything. He frowned when he noticed something, then went back. Rather than words, there were indentations in the pages. It was almost as if Tom had tried to write, but his words came shy of the surface—like he'd been stuck under ice, or something. Draco squinted at the page, trying to read it.

He made out a passage: Harry's been here since the start of the month and I don't know if I'm going to see him all that much at school. I don't know what to do. I freeze every time he's around.

Draco froze too. He flipped the diary shut, to look at the cover. Sure enough, the faded 1943 was no longer there.

This wasn't Tom's diary. It was Ginny Weasley's.