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Chapter 4
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A different view of Chapters 4 and 5 of Runaway Dragon
http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=431805&chapter=4
Another day, another lot of expensive lawyers wasting time and Lucius's money. Draco's money. I do not need to waste my precious time here! But I have to sit and wait until they decide they don't need me. At least I have Munin to talk to.
Lucius looks old. Perhaps the strain was more than he could take. Now that the Dark Lord's back. It was easier being the head of the pack wasn't it Lucius? A few meetings, a lot of talking, people looking up to you, doing what you say, leaving your hands clean. Easier than having to grovel in graveyards and dreading the moment the madman wants a little entertainment from your screaming.
You might find Azkaban easier than Voldemort's little games Lucius. I've had both, and while it's not a choice I want to make again, I think I'd still choose the prison.
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So when I get back, the boy has his head in a maths book, and refuses to give it up. Doesn't want to eat, wants to do algebra. Did Lucius drop him on his head that night? Hex him in some new and awful way? Now wouldn't that be a wonderful new curse "Academentia!" Make someone stop focusing on Quidditch and start focusing on schoolwork...
It would be instantly classed as the Fourth Unforgivable!
Ack. And now he's asking awkward questions. Lets move him on from that, I do not want to talk about Death Eaters thank you. Odd though, maybe Lucius didn't drag him in as far as I thought, he doesn't know I was one, I thought he would have been told that.
I can't believe he is still on about electricity. He really must have been hit hard by this business of his father to be obsessing about that. I suppose there's not much else here to latch onto. Not much else to keep his mind off what he saw. Have to get him out of the flat... He can come to the building meeting, can't get in much trouble there!
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Sarah said he'd been useful all day, so I hand him Billy for a moment so he can continue to be useful, look after Billy while I deal with this. Nothing is going on in this meeting, I may as well talk to someone about potions.
Come back down to the oh-so-familiar noise of teenagers fighting. I let Head-of-House-Snape take over, he has had a lot of practice in breaking up fights.
Yet more depths to Draco, taking on Mark the Shark eh? Without his shadowing goons too, I wonder if he realised he had no backup when he started?
I think I will find young Mark later. He has to learn he can't touch what's mine.
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What, in that book *again*? This is beyond a joke, a teenager preferring books to eating?
(And hasn't it happened before? You know it has. Oh. Could eating with us be as bad as eating in the Great Hall was for that other teenager so long ago?)
Well, it's not natural, he needs to find some other way to cope.
(No, it's not hypocritical, if I'd been less in books and more with people I might have seen sense before I made so many bad choices.)
I spoke about him to Sarah that night. How he'd fitted in so quickly with the local kids, been so good with Billy, even managed in a kitchen without utter disaster and without whining, which surprised me more.
She looked at me with that "you aren't fit to be let out without a keeper" look she gets when she thinks I'm being particularly thick about the real world, about things that aren't Hogwarts and potions.
"Maybe you aren't the only one who can be a halfway decent human being when you aren't in that hellhole of a school!"
Yes. Well. She doesn't like the person I am when I'm at Hogwarts. She doesn't understand that I have to be that person. I have a duty, I have to be inhuman there. A monster to fight monsters. To protect against monsters.
Maybe Draco had to be inhuman too... Because the Elements know that Lucius was a monster.
Both Draco and I have to go back to Hogwarts come the end of summer, better he gets back to his own circles as soon as he can. He wasn't born to be hanging about with a bunch of squibs and orphans and halfbreeds, and when the novelty wears off and he misses his money and his things, and the easy life, he'll be aching to get back to Hogwarts and everything it stands for. Back home.
I wonder when Hogwarts stopped being home for me?
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