Spoiler Warning: This story is a sixth year fic that follows on from the events of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As a conseqeunce this story contains *major* spoilers for book 5. You have been warned.
SNAKE HEALER: THE MALFOY MUGGLE LOVER
CHAPTER 11: FRIENDSHIP
Harry followed Draco out of the dinning room soon afterwards. His suspicions about Lucius' motives towards him had only increased after the Malfoy Patriarch's dismissal of his OWL results as 'acceptable.' After all he had seen the elder Malfoy complaining about his son's grades before and that was when they were much higher than Harry's own marks, as had been the general trend up until now that is. Not that Harry held any sympathy for the Slytherin – on the contrary he felt Malfoy deserved bad grades for being such an immature stuck-up prick, who seemed to put more effort into baiting the Gryffindors than into his schoolwork. He had even put this point to Draco's parents when they had commented on the difference in grades, although, naturally, he had been somewhat politer than in his own mind.
Thinking of academics and work made Harry realise that he had some urgent research of his own to do on the subject of Legilimency. Therefore, he headed directly to the library to commence it straight away. He would have dearly loved to have Hermione to help him, but such assistance would be next to impossible to acquire as she was most probably at her home in Salisbury. Then of course there was the prospect that she might have found out about his supposed death. That morning's Daily Prophet had remained suspiciously quiet about the subject, as apparently had been the Wizarding Wireless Network, but he wouldn't have put it past a deceived Ministry Official or duped Order member to have told her instead. Of course thinking about Hermione only made him miss his friends and curse the fact that he couldn't contact them as Lucius had warded the manor owlery against him, preventing him from sending any letters that he might have written.
His isolation from his friends was made even harder by the presence, even a temporary one, of Draco Malfoy. This point was driven home when he encountered his archrival as he made his way to the entrance hall just after lunch, after an extremely frustrating morning.
"Ah look. It's Potter the Father Snatcher," the blond Slytherin sneered upon seeing his enemy. He acted as if he were performing to his goons, even though no one was there.
Harry immediately tensed, any talk of his parentage, especially regarding Lucius Malfoy, was a sensitive subject for him at the moment. "Can't you find your father, Malfoy?" Harry taunted in a patronising manner, his voice clearly containing a hint of bitterness. This was met with a twisted sneer and a fierce glare that clearly proclaimed Draco wanted nothing to do with his father. "Well don't ask me where he is," Harry continued, "As I care about is that he's not here, where I am."
"You surprise me, Potter," Draco jibed bitterly, anger and hatred etched on his face. "I would have expected you to know the current location and activity of everyone of your adoring fans. You wouldn't want them to be doing something that didn't revolve around you, would you?"
"I thought you knew your father better than that Malfoy," Harry retorted, trying to sound calm, and only just succeeding. "He's not one of my fans; he hates me."
It was a reply that shocked Draco so much that he could only sneer at his enemy's stupidity. He had thought Potter intelligent enough to at least realise that his father had some form of positive feelings towards him; but it appeared the Gryffindor stupidity gene had triumphed once again. "Your stupidity astounds me, Potter," Draco said, unconsciously putting on a very good impression of his head of house, "Even a blind man could see that he's obsessed with you."
"You're the one obsessed with me, Malfoy," Harry snapped in reply, refusing to believe anything his archrival said, even for an instant. It was only a spur of the moment comment, but it had a greater impact than he intended. That however was because it happened to be the truth.
The fury of denial instantly shot through the young Malfoy heir. "I am not obsessed with you!" he snarled hotly, the intensity of the emotions in the reply surprising even Draco. He refused to believe that his life revolved around his enemy. He was a Malfoy and Malfoys were not so petty as to become obsessed with defeating and outshining their enemies. That was the domain of the Weasleys. Of course, he had always tried to beat Potter, but then that was because he was ambitious and always wanted to be the best and that generally Potter happened to be in the way. His rivalry, no, enmity, with Potter wasn't personal, but a product of the fact that the Gryffindor had everything he wanted – Fame, Popularity, Power and until this year, victory in quidditch. No, he said to himself, it wasn't personal.
Harry, however, remained unconvinced by his archrival's desperate cry. In fact, he derived a kind of twisted pleasure from Draco's desperation and the pain that it caused him. It was common knowledge among the Gryffindors that Malfoy was obsessed with besting him and that this desire had only increased following Lucius' recent imprisonment in Azkaban and the events of the past few days. Indeed, Hermione had mentioned it to Harry at least once. He didn't voice any of this in his reply though, preferring accompany an enigmatic grin by simply saying, "I wouldn't be sure of that, Malfoy."
Unfortunately, Malfoy had recovered his composure and come up with a retort, so Harry wasn't treated to the satisfaction of seeing his rival's torment for a second time. "It's you want isn't it?" Draco sneered, "To be the centre of attention, for everyone to be obsessed with you, the perfect Boy-Who-Lived. Well I've got news for you Potter. We're not. I'm not obsessed with you, I hate you, Potter, for what you've done to my father and I want revenge."
"So?" Harry answered dismissively, sounding as if he couldn't care any less about what Malfoy thought of him, which, of course, he didn't. Still it was reassuring to know that some things never changed. Knowing that Malfoy still hated him as passionately as ever encouraged him that the mad world where both of the Slytherin's parents acted kindly towards him was not all encompassing after all.
"So?" Draco repeated bewilderedly, failing to accept that his enemy could care so little about him. Furthermore, the act of being dismissed as an irrelevance only angered him further. "Don't you have anything more to say than 'So?'"
"Hmm, let me think," Harry said slowly, adopting an exaggerated thinking pose, that only wound up his school rival even more because of it's lack of seriousness. "No, I don't actually, so I'm not quite sure why I'm wasting my time talking to an arrogant spoilt brat like you." Before Malfoy could come out with a reply that matched the expression of indignant outrage that covered his face, Harry turned and walked straight out of the large wooden front doors to the manor house, ignoring the cries of self-important indignity that followed behind him.
He didn't get far though before he was interrupted by another person that he didn't want to see – the strange, yet familiar boy that he had encountered on his way home during the previous day. The elfin looking boy waited just outside the manor grounds, leaning on the small side gate which led from Malfoy Land to a small lane leading to the village of Alton Magis. It was clear that he wanted to speak to Harry.
"I came to apologise for what I said to you yesterday about being like a Malfoy," he said humbly before Harry could ask him to move so as he could get through the gate. He sounded and looked as though he truly meant what he was saying. "It was a stupid thing to say, because you'll never be anything like them. You're the kindest, bravest, most noble person that I know and nothing could ever change that."
Harry looked at the other boy suspiciously, wanting to know where this high opinion of him had come from, after all the Daily Prophet had been saying nice things about him ever since it had admitted Voldemort's return. For once, he wasn't angry, his temper having been placated by the sincerity of the longhaired boy's apology. "How would you know what I'm like? We only met for the first time yesterday and you definitely shouldn't believe everything you read about me in the papers."
"You're not the only Gryffindor forced to put up with a disguise for the holidays and an evil git of a father," The other boy said, his distaste at as his personal circumstances detracting from the warmth of his tone. Adjusting his stance, he stood up straight, allowing Harry to go through the gate.
Harry's mind went back to the encounter with the boy's father that had taken place the previous afternoon. He had thought that his friend – he knew that the boy was speaking the truth when he said they were friends and housemates, even if he wasn't sure who exactly– had been exaggerating before hand, but afterwards he knew that every criticism his friend had made was true. "I ought to apologise too, for being insensitive about your problems with your father. Until I met him, I simply couldn't believe that anyone could be a worse father than Lucius Malfoy."
"You don't know the worst of it," the unknown Gryffindor muttered, his tone and gaze hardening sharply at the knowledge of the secrets that his father bore. He would dearly love to tell his friend everything – he deserved to know – but he felt it unfair to say anymore whilst Harry had more important problems to deal with. "There's things about that man that make me so angry, that at times I could kill him. Some of the stuff he's done is so horrible that it's just unforgivable."
"What kind of things?" Harry asked, finally going through the gate and following his friend along the road to the village. He was curious to know what about the boy's father, beyond his arrogant tone, was so bad that it could possibly merit the amount of hatred that his friend held for him.
The elfin looking boy opened his mouth to speak, before closing it again and shaking his head. "I can't tell you, mate," he said regretfully, "It's unfair for me to burden you with all my troubles on you, when you're in just as bad a situation as me." He felt guilty for not telling him and even more guilty for not even saying that a lot of it was to do with Harry, but he knew that at the end of the day saying nothing was the right thing to do.
Harry, unwilling to pressurise his friend on what appeared to be a touchy issue, didn't push the subject any further. Instead he changed to topic of conversation to a something slightly more light hearted – the recent troubles of Draco Malfoy. Naturally, Harry's friend reacted extremely favourably to the news that Malfoy had had a major falling out with his father. After all, Malfoy's hero worship and general dependence on his father was a well-known and much disliked part of the blond's personality. One thing Harry hadn't expected though was the other boy's reaction to Malfoy's bad OWL results or more specifically the amount of joy he derived from it.
"Five passes!" Harry's friend exclaimed gleefully, the big grin on his face expanding that little bit more, "Is that all? Even I should have done better than that! But then I haven't been relying on Daddy's bribes to give me good grades for the past five years. Of course, my dad couldn't bribe the teachers, even if he wanted to," He added hastily, as if afraid he had given Harry the wrong idea. Not that the boy-who-lived had believed, even for one instant, that his friend's father would do the same thing, simply because he didn't know anyone else with a father in a position to do such a thing.
"All it does is prove what we knew all along – that he's as stupid as he acts," Harry summarised, his care-free expression and voice, contrasting with the malicious nature of his words. His friend laughed.
"You know what's even better about this though?" the other Gryffindor asked gleefully. Harry, though, didn't have a clue what the other boy was thinking. "He can't go running to Daddy and get him to fix it for him, because they've fallen out!" He continued spiritedly, once he had spied the look of confusion that had met his rhetorical question, "And it's not as if you-know-who is going to help him to improve his exam results."
Harry chuckled lightly at the prospect of You-Know-Who aiding Malfoy's fight to get his exam results upgraded. For some reason an image of the dark lord arguing with an extremely stoic and stern looking Griselda Marchbanks popped into his head. "Yes, but some of the death eaters might, after all some of them are quite senior in the ministry," he argued, once he had finished chuckling over his mental image and shared it with his friend, who had shared the laugh, even if he hadn't found it quite so funny.
"Who would want to be seen helping a…" The other boy began, as the two boys turned down a path in between the church in Alton Magis and the vicarage. It was sheltered by two large hedges on either side, making it difficult to see into the churchyard on one side or the house on the other, which was just as well as at this point that an Owl swooped down from the trees above and dropped a letter right into the other boy's hands.
Harry guessed the contents immediately, even though he had only caught a brief glimpse of the front of the envelope. There was none of the hesitation Harry had shown upon receiving his own results, although his friend looked a little pale with nerves. Instead he tore into the envelope hurriedly, in a manner which he had seen countless times before, when any of his dorm mates received letters.
"Bloody Hell!" His friend exclaimed, looking amazed and overjoyed, "I passed them all, even Potions!"
"What grades did you get for them?" Harry asked, leaning in towards his friend, so he could peer over his shoulder and look at the sheet of parchment listing the results. He didn't really need to hear his friend exclaim joyfully that he 'Average (A)' for all nine of his subjects, for he could see it on the boy's results sheet. "Well done," Harry said amiably, once he had finished spying on his friend's grades. He was genuinely happy for him, although initially he had felt a little bit concerned that his friend had gained the better OWL results. He knew that he shouldn't be worried about who had the better grades and felt a guilty for doing so, but he couldn't help being a little competitive, especially when he, Ron, Seamus and Dean were so evenly matched.
The conversation continued as the path turned to the left and the climbed up the hill. His friend – Harry realised half way with a start halfway up the hill that he actually didn't know who his friend was, but he felt a little stupid asking him his name – had changed the topic of conversation to Harry's own results. He seemed to be genuinely happy when Harry told him that he had got two 'O's, but showed no sign of surprise or amazement. He found out several days later that his friend had expected Harry to get O's in both 'Defence Against the Dark Arts' and 'Care of Magical Creatures.' He didn't blink an eye-lid when Harry confessed that he got a 'D' for Divination, instead asking to hear the outlandish accident and death predictions that Harry had fed the stern and uncompromising examiner, which Harry duly recounted, or at least as much as he could remember of them. They shared more than a few laughs over that as the conversation continued, rapidly changing topic, without settling on one subject for long. In fact, it almost seemed as though the other boy seemed a little afraid to go into too much depth, for fear of revealing which of Harry's dorm mates he really was. Not that Harry countenanced this notion for a few seconds before dismissing it as being ludicrous. After all, the boy walking along side him had demonstrated enough knowledge to convince Harry that he was really one of his friends in disguise.
He returned to the Manor around five, feeling a lot better for having the knowledge that he wasn't totally alone, despite his supposed death, even if it had gone unreported, and the Lucius imposed isolation from his friends. It still didn't solve the problem the Malfoy patriarch presented, but it certainly made his troubles a lot easier to bear, especially now that he knew some one else was suffering from the same situation. He was even in a good enough mood to go to dinner, rather than eat in his room, despite the presence of the senior Malfoy. It was a decision aided considerably by the knowledge that the junior Malfoy would be absent. He noticed the difference this change made the moment he walked into the dinning room, as the tension that Draco's presence had created was no longer evident. Instead, there was a sense of companionship, which initially made Harry feel a little tense, but which he soon ignored. It was almost as if Draco had never existed. One thing he did appreciate though was the silence that accompanied the meal – he certainly found it preferable to conducting small talk, an art he hadn't had much practice at. He was extremely disappointed therefore when Lucius broke the silence with an announcement that Harry had not been expecting.
"Severus informs you are in need of Occlumency lessons and asked me to teach you." Lucius informed him sternly, expecting his younger son to argue. He didn't though – he had been planning on asking for them anyway.
That's a lot better isn't it? At least time wise it is - 8 days instead of five weeks. Apologies if this chapter feels a little rushed. I don't think it shows it, but I've been trying desperately to get this chapter out today, as I will be busy for the next few days.
Just for clarification, Aunt Bella is indeed Bellatrix Lestrange. As for the question of Draco's loyalty that will come to head in the next few chapters, as he will be forced to choose between Voldemort and his family, a choice is going to be anything but easy for him.
Thank You to all those who reviewed chapter the last few chapters, your reviews and your patience were most appreciated. If you want me to e-mail you when I update this fic leave your e-mail address in your review.