Part Eleven : Song


He is gone.

Has been gone, really. For nearly a month. And that is why I am staring down Dumbledore's preening phoenix and yawning as I struggle with the pull of fatigue's eager fingers.

My father's study, contrary to what one might believe, is always impossibly cluttered. In one corner you might find piles of haphazard books, in another a box of Dark Arts spells, Potions ingredients, unfinished letters, spilt bottles of ink, and any number of leftover meals and their subsequent dishes. It is like a separate home, distant from the orderly marble lines of the rest of the manor. Still, as used to that as I am, Dumbledore's office is too haphazard for me to even imagine making sense of it all.

Dumbledore never really reminded me of anything save an old wizard, but at the moment he so resembles a mountain goat that I have to think my most sobering thoughts to keep from laughing. (My dragon hide and your goat horns, stubborn streak for stubborn streak.)

Sobering thoughts. Right. Potter. My half-smile melts instantly.

"I don't want to," I whine for the sixteenth time. "It's not going to do anything but leave one or both of us dead."

His eyes twinkle and I instinctively scowl. "You must work together, Draco; that is imperative. Otherwise nothing shall be achieved. If you won't consider it for your or his sake, do this for Harry."

"Hey!" I glare. "I would think you, of all people, would play fair. Using Potter's name like a bribe, that isn't playing fair."

The wizened old goat gives me an enigmatic smile, one that threatens to evaporate my remaining shreds of patience and makes me want to stomp on the floor like a spoiled child. "Aren't we all playing to win, these days?"

"How does that make you any different from my father?"

I expect him to tell me morals, or motives, or means, but he only watches me. "I'll leave that decision up to you."

Silence. I twist my fingers and force myself to stop. Malfoys don't fidget. I don't fidget. "Potter really looks up to you."

Instead of responding, he folds his hands and says, "You do not call him Harry."

Mumbled, "I haven't earned the right."

"Oh? And how will you do that? Are you not friends?"

"No." He raises an eyebrow at my hurried tone and I think of Potter and his smile as fleeting and contagious and impulsive as thirty-second notes. (Give me but a glance and I shall compose a symphony to the beat of your heart. Oh, Potter, where are you?) I glance at Dumbledore, or rather his flowing beard, as I have not the courage to meet his eyes, and whisper in an echo, "No."

"Yet you trust him, don't you? Care about him, about his safety? You are here. I believe you would give all you have for him, Draco."

I shut my eyes, but his words have wrestled their way into my brain and have granted my tongue a life of its own. My voice is the strangled croak of broken violins. I whisper, softly, to the eyes interrogating me from the backs of my eyelids, "I love him."

"Then," Dumbledore says simply, "that is the best sort of not-friendship to have. Stay here, I shall send Mr. Weasley in. Can you two manage not to destroy my office?"

"I'm not sure," I say truthfully, but he has vanished out the door. I visited the Headmaster's office only twice in my time at Hogwarts, and both times his chairs seemed enormous. I suppose I've grown. Changed, obviously.

The door clicks and I can hear muffled voices. "…if I must," is all I catch, before he strides into my line of vision and I can't help but stare.

I barely recognize him. I have to blink, wondering if this six-foot, lanky man with an earring and impeccable robes is truly Ron Weasley. My mouth, however, seems to have recovered instantly and says rather snippily, "I say, have you discovered a fortune buried under that ratty hole you live in? What's it called again, the Tunnel?"

He stares at me, and his face twitches, but when he speaks he sounds remarkably unfazed. "Is that how it's to be, Malfoy?"

Potter. This is for Potter. "No," I say quickly. "Old habits die hard."

"Then I suppose I should take this opportunity to kick you to a bloody pulp, as the habit of that urge seems particularly immortal. Only I won't. Dumbledore says we must behave."

It makes me uneasy to see how they all fawn over the old man, but I must concede a bit of grudging respect. And Weasley, how he has changed. "What's the matter with you?" I demand. "Aren't you going to leap on me and pound me into dust?"

He laughs. Laughs! At me! "Is that what you came for?"

"No," I admit, albeit reluctantly. "I came because I need to find Potter."

"Don't we all," sighs the redhead. "What's it been, a month?"

"Four weeks tomorrow."

"Bugger. 'S not like Harry to just disappear like this! Haven't I told them that, a thousand times if it's been one? I said, he could be kidnapped. He could be dead. But no, all the Ministry cares about are taxes and commerce regulations and sodding Luciu - oh. Um. Your, er, father."

I have never seen such an emphatic burst from Weasley, at least that coherently earnest, when he isn't threatening to rip me limb from limb. "You do care about him," I say quietly.

"Your father? Not in a - oh. Harry! Of course I care about him, you git. Apparently the concept of choosing people you actually like as friends is one unheard of in the Malfoy home."

"I," say I, "don't have friends."

Genuine curiosity, though reluctant, sparks in his eyes. "What's Harry, then?"

"Everything."

(Damn. Isn't today just the day for ridiculous, sappy confessions. And then again, he has disappeared from the world, slipping from sight if not from mind, and what else is there to say?)

His face stirs in a spectacular grimace, but eventually he sighs. "You're a twisted bastard, Malfoy, and never in my life will I understand you. I'm not sure I want to. But as I was saying, the Ministry doesn't do shit. They think, oh ho, Voldemort hasn't taken over the world yet, Harry Potter must be okay. That's the only reason they care!"

"You aren't the first to call that lot a bunch of selfish bastards," I say mildly.

"Oh? And who else, pray tell?"

Quietly, "My father."

Silence, then gruffly, "Well, he's right."

"Yes, and they are that." We trade glares, daring each other to disagree. I wonder if he's ever conceded to anyone that my father is right before. Working in the Ministry, he must hate my father as much as he always hated me. "And Dumbledore?"

"Is doing his bloody best," Weasley says defensively. "He's not a god."

"He certainly gets treated that way."

"He's a great man, Malfoy. But you wouldn't know, would you?"

"He didn't save Sirius," I say.

"Neither did you!"

Silence weaves notes around us. He stares down at me from where he stands and I realize that I am sitting, at a disadvantage that my father always warned me about. Earning a puzzled look from him, I immediately leap to my feet. "Neither did Potter," I finally growl, looking away from him.

"He tried."

"How would you know? You weren't even there!"

"Yes, and I wish I would have been."

"What, you're deluding yourself with the clever idea that if you'd been present, he'd still be around? Don't be ridiculous, Weasel. Your friendship can't count for that much."

"Probably counts for more than yours does," he shoots back. Finally, one hand going wearily to his temple, he sinks into a chair. I would stand and look down upon him, keeping the upper hand in conversation or whatever my father likes to prattle on about, but my feet are too tired. So I follow suit. "Look, I didn't traipse all the way over here to argue with you. We're supposed to be working together, and that's what I plan to do, for Harry's good. You can bet if Harry wasn't involved, I'd never be talking civilly with you. I'd hoped never to see your face again."

"Sincerest apologies, really," I drawl. "Working together for the same goal, hmm? Since when did you go and grow a bit of maturity?"

"Probably when you were off getting cozy with Harry at the Academy," he retorts, voice poisonous.

"Oh? Is this a recurring nightmare of yours, Weasley?"

He looks at me for a long moment, and I look back. He really has changed, from the stubborn lines of his jaw to the deeper - and more controlled - pitch to his voice. (It occurs to me, ridiculously, that even standing he was taller than I was. Where's the advantage in that, Father?) "No," he finally says, and I'm startled yet again at the even tone in his words. "I've come to terms with it, the most I can, anyhow. I just regret not being able to see him as much."

"I haven't seen him lately either, if that's escaped your notice."

"Thanks for pointing that out," he throws back sarcastically. "Honestly, Malfoy."

"He dropped out of school. Without notice. And he doesn't answer any owls. Well, except one, he said he wasn't captured by Voldemort and to leave him alone. After that, he kept on sending the letters back unopened."

"And you decided to keep the fact that he wasn't in Voldemort's clutches a secret until now?" he thunders, temper finally showing. "You absolute…Malfoy! We're all going out of our minds with worry over him, and you just go about with this little bit of knowledge tucked away, never thinking to reassure us that maybe Harry's bloody all right?"

"Oh," I say. "Sorry?"

"Fuck you, Malfoy. Fuck. You." He is pacing now, hands at his temples, distraught. The only pauses he takes are to send irate glares in my direction. "Dumbledore's a barmy bat for thinking we could work with you. Ugh!"

"Sit down," I snap. "You're making me dizzy. Potter's not with Voldemort, that's the important thing, and now you know. I've just found out four days ago."

"At which time you could have owled someone," he grumbles, but reluctantly sits. "You're impossible."

"A fact Potter reminds me of every day," I reply. And he does, or did, doesn't/didn't he? I can hear his voice in my ears, affectionately frustrated. Or perhaps simply frustrated. How am I to know? How am I to separate the subtle nuances in his tone, a song I've heard only echoes of in the past weeks. Echoes. Dripping. Haunting.

"Obviously not lately," he snipes. "Now what happened at Azkaban? That's why Harry ran off, isn't it?"

"Nothing happened."

"Nothing?" he echoes, and I hear his voice rise a few notes, skeptically, wavering. (A novice's composition, skipping with unease. Strings brushed with hesitation, nerves tuned too sharply, stretched to the point of almost breaking. The music is stuttered too fast.)

"You know what happened! We all went off to our separate little jobs and got a bunch of people killed, Weasley! That's what happened, all right? So bugger off!"

He regards me more pensively than I've ever imagined a Weasley looking. "I would have thought you'd know about death. Being you."

"Well," I say, "I suppose the lesson is not to think, then."

"Sirius and Cho-"

"Died for a good cause," I recite. "They gave their lives for the war and our triumph against the Dark Lord and Muggle persecution. They sacrificed all they could for the equality and the well being of our posterity. Isn't that what we hear, hmm? Isn't that the propaganda your precious, beloved Dumbledore spits at us day after day?"

"Dumbledore gives us reasons to hope, you bastard," Weasley shoves right back in my face. "He makes this war something worthwhile. He's what's holding us together."

"Oh? Not Potter?"

"Just because Harry's the only thing holding you together doesn't mean the rest of us are that pathetic." A beat and his face softens just a notch. "Dumbledore's holding Harry together, too. None of us, not even you, Malfoy, could get through this without Dumbledore. So I don't want to hear your righteous speeches about hypocritical words and meaningless deaths. I don't know why you're fighting for what you are, but some of us actually believe in our cause."

"What makes you think I don't?"

He smiles so very, very slightly. "Call it a feeling I have, Malfoy."

"All right. Trust your intuition, then. I'll trust my own, and it says you're a poverty-stricken sod who likes to live vicariously through the riches and adventures of his best friend."

"You do that," he says, refusing to take the bait. I wonder just what has changed him so much. Did the Weasel finally hit puberty of some kind? "Then remember that Harry's still missing, and we haven't done a damn thing about it."

"Harry," I reply, "obviously doesn't want to be found."

"Do you want to find him?"

"Yes."

"Well then."

I sigh in frustration. "I've been looking. I will look. But if it leaks to the papers-"

"Dumbledore planted rumors about special missions," Weasley says. "Hopefully, there will be no suspicion. Everyone's still busy erecting monuments and tossing flowers on every grave they find."

"I sense bitterness."

"Monuments and flowers," Weasley tells me, as if I don't already know, "don't bring people back."

(You, Father, with your marble statues and her ostentatious funeral that you did not even attend. Can you buy life, then, as you bargain for everything else?) "Yes," I say, "I know that." He regards me evenly and I sense we have reached the closest thing to a truce we will get, stumbling over the brink of enmity to a tolerable sense of annoyance. "I've tried contacting him, as you know. It won't work. He won't reply until he's absolutely ready to be found."

"Which could be next week and could be next year," he sighs. "I don't understand. Why would he just go running off? Harry's not one to shirk responsibility."

"Obviously you don't know him as well as you thought."

Something twitches, tightens, in his jaw, but he finally resigns himself to but a roll of the eyes and asks sarcastically, "Do enlighten me, then."

"He isn't shirking responsibility. He can't get away from it. Nothing serious about this war is going to be resolved without Potter being there, and he knows it. He can't escape that, but he can escape us."

"Why would he want to?" He eyes me suspiciously. "You didn't have some sort of pathetic quarrel, did you?"

"One that would make him run away and hide? I don't think so, Weasel. He just can't - I think - bear the fact that we all must depend on him and he must depend on us. He isn't used to it, even after all the years he's been part of this world. He wants to do this by himself." I look around Dumbledore's office, the somehow orderly chaos that is warm enough to be comforting. Father's messes always have the feeling of being neglected and abandoned. "And if we," I continue, mentally altering that to a more singular I, "become too important…"

"Are you saying I'm not important to him?" he jumps in, as single-minded as always. Honestly, is their obviously precarious friendship all that haunts his mind?

"He's more responsible than you realize," I barge on, completely ignoring his query. "He just can't bear to dish it out to the rest of us."

Weasley's suspicious gaze narrows at me. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Shrug. "Maybe not."

Silence.

Finally, "It's bullshit, Malfoy. You make him out to be some coldhearted hero without feelings or attachments. How can you even claim to know Harry? He's a loving, caring, warm, friendly, conscientious, honest, brave, goodhearted-"

"Are you done with that endless stream of adjectives?"

"Fuck you. He's a person."

(Eyes flaming, the background of Muggle normalcy wavering behind him, summer's fingers wrapped around him. His voice, raw with desperation, telling me how very much of a person he is. A fact he's needed to prove in the most elemental way, more than being the star of ballads and epics and lengthy love poems. A person who cannot be captured in words or notes or even stark black and white lines.)

"Which I can see better than the rest of the world, the world that built him a special pedestal the day his name made all the papers. And," with eyes narrowed, "that pedestal isn't big enough for Potter and all his precious sidekicks."

There is a long silence while he takes that in. Dumbledore's ratty phoenix eyes me carefully. (All right, perhaps not ratty. Its glorious plumage is, of course, the patented red and gold of Gryffindor. I always knew the goat played favorites.) "Fame does not go to Harry's head that way," Weasley finally says firmly. "I know that."

"It's not just fame. When Voldemort strikes that pedestal to dust, do you think Potter really wants half the world to go plunging down with him? Besides. There's something in his eyes that makes me think - well, when that pedestal goes plummeting, Potter probably thinks he'll be less than ever. A nobody. Someone no one could be interested in, someone the world won't even acknowledge as a blip on its surface. Someone that, well, no one could love or befriend or care about, because that's what he was before, wasn't he?"

Weasley stares at me. "You're full of talk. What are you, a bloody psychologist?"

I shrug.

"Well, you keep formulating your damn theories, then, and I'll look for him."

"You have work."

"You have school."

We sigh at each other. "I think," I finally concede, "that overloading him with owls will just push him further away. Convince him that he needs the solitude to be as strong as he needs to be. Make sure Dumbledore keeps the world under the impression he's off working hard to defeat Voldemort - which, I suppose, he is - and I'll look."

"Where will you start?" he scowls. "The world's a big place."

"I wasn't aware," I drawl sarcastically. "Look, I'll owl you, all right? We'll," with a sour expression, "keep in touch."

"Lovely," he retorts, the same delighted expression twisting his features. "We can be owl pals."

I roll my eyes. "Goodbye now, Weasel." I don't wait for him to rise, don't wait for parting words, simply brush past him and out the door. (A large globe, its surface shifting with the minutes, is knocked to the floor by my hasty passage out of there. I do not look back. I don't think I look back for anything, except the harmony of him in the chaos of the world.)

I don't mean to wander Hogwarts, really. The damn place with its cold stone walls and contradictory warm laughter holds too many memories with which to taunt me. But I find myself haunting its halls nevertheless, the stray student pausing to give me a curious glance before passing on.

"Draco!" A squealed greeting, and I am assaulted from behind as two slim arms embrace my neck. I twist, startled beyond immediate recoiling. To my surprise, a familiar auburn-haired girl is clinging about my shoulders.

"Ergh, Fiona?"

On second thought, her beaming face is not familiar at all. I was used to her cold eyes and commanding voice, the fiery chill that invaded her tone in notes of Avada Kedavra ice. Here is a schoolgirl seemingly untouched by the war, and she is laughing with her Slytherin friends. "What are you doing here? Are you going to be staying? Where's your friend?"

To my even greater surprise, several other students are gathered about me by this time. A tall, dark-haired boy that I recognize vaguely from seeing in the common room during my last years of schooling is looking at me curiously. "You're Draco Malfoy?"

"Er, yes?"

"Wicked." He grins quite spontaneously. "We hear stories about you, you know."

I make a face, detaching Fiona from my neck. "How bloody flattering. No, Fiona, I'm not staying. I just had a meeting with Dumbledore."

"Really?" They back away slightly while Fiona stares quizzically at me. "Was it about-"

I bend down to whisper low enough that the rest do not hear. "He's gone."

"Dumbledore? But - Oh! Him! Oh no, that's awful." A look crosses her face, darkening her eyes. "Why didn't Dumbledore tell us? We could be helping! We could do something!"

The other Slytherins look uncomfortable at her emphatic support of Dumbledore's side. I wonder if any of them are Death Eaters, how many of them have parents with the famed Mark. I wonder if any of their parents were among the group Fiona and David so mercilessly killed.

"Fiona?" I pull her farther from her little group, backed against the corridor wall. "Do they know?"

"That I work for Dumbledore?" she says, shrugging. "Pretty much. They know David does, but none of 'em like David much." A grin dances over her lips. "One of those hated Gryffindors, right?"

"Don't they-"

"Hate me? Exclude me?" Laugh. "No. We don't talk about it. We don't talk about much, really, except things that don't matter. You know: hairstyles and new robes and who's currently busy in the Astronomy Tower. Quidditch maneuvers and homework." Her voice lowers, not only in loudness but also in her tone, and I am reminded of the resolute girl who pointed her wand without hesitation and chanted those fearful words. "They don't understand, you know? They don't know how it is. So we don't talk about it. It's the same for David."

"Ah." And I think I can see the haunted melodies weaving their traps in her eyes, chilling that laughing gray into icier orbs. I think I can see the bars evaporating around her, can see the doors sliding open. (You are the one that fears captivity, Potter. And it is I who fears freedom. The question is, which am I to you? And which are you to me?) "I - yeah, I know."

"I thought you would." She smiles almost sadly at me. "I've got to get to class. I hope you find him. Let me know if I can help?"

I nod. "I will."

She sets off with her friends, smile returning larger than ever, the laughter ringing like a jocund and mocking melody. (It is the type of tune you whistle without thinking, the type of mask you wear without question. The cage you hold on to when the spring weather is unexpectedly chilly.)

I start. The tall boy has returned, blinking. "Uh," he says, almost shyly. "Were you really - wereyoureallyturnedintoaferret?"

I give him my most intimidating glare, wondering absently if he will tell them all how Draco Malfoy snapped at him when they all sit around the common room fire. "No," I say as firmly as possible. I can see it in his eyes that he doesn't believe me. "I was not."

He shirks back, and then the faintest smile twitches the corner of his mouth. "Are you really shagging Harry Potter, then?"

I look at him. Really look at him, the laughter in his eyes, the barest smirk, the familiar robes and Slytherin colored tie. I look at him and wonder if someday he will know what it's like, if someday he will hold his wand to someone else's throat - mine? - and whisper the words Fiona already knows.

(I don't know why I care, but it gives me some vague comfort when I feel his eyes on my back as I walk away.)

"Are you?" he yells, mirth in his tone.

"Yes," I reply without turning. My voice is flat. "I am."

Something tells me it isn't supposed to be that cold. I wonder what Potter would have said, faced with the same question. Something tells me that I am not supposed to feel this empty, the last echoing strains of his presence draining me of everything I have left to be drained of. Something tells me that I could be joking, laughing, trading banter with these former housemates who haven't tasted the pull of that hypnotizing song that tickles my ears.

Fiona is right. They don't know. But they will, and that is the least comforting of all.