Author: Arsahi
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the characters therein. Sadly. J. K. Rowling owns them, the lucky girl.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: T/M
Chapter: Two
Chapter Title: The Threat is Real
Notes: WARNING: SPOILERS FROM HALF-BLOOD PRINCE.
Chapter Two: The Threat is Real
"Are you sure Dumbledore told you to try and make friends with Malfoy?" Ron Weasley asked dubiously of his best mate, Harry Potter. He, Harry, and Hermione Granger were spread about his room.
Harry sighed and looked at Ron. "I already told you, Ron. Professor Dumbledore told me to try and make things as easy as possible on myself this term, and the most obvious way is to at least have a truce with Malfoy. I'd rather gouge my eyes out than actually be friends with the prat."
"Don't you think it's rather suspicious that Malfoy agreed so easily?" Hermione piped up, leaning against the side of the bed with a knee drawn to her chest. The boys sat upon Ron's mattress.
"I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth," Harry said simply. "If Malfoy wants to agree to this, then I hope he's telling the truth."
"Why do you keep answering his letters, Harry?" Ron wanted to know, his hand dangling off of his bed dangerously close to Hermione's head.
Harry had already explained this several times to his friends. Dumbledore, before he had brought the famous boy to the Weasleys, had told him that this year, it would be critical to make things as easy on himself as possible. Harry took this advice seriously, opting to make peace with Draco Malfoy for the year, which he hoped meant Malfoy avoiding him as often as possible and refraining from leading the Slytherins in rousing renditions of the original "Weasley Is Our King."
Honestly, as he had told both his friends and Malfoy, he would rather die than actually make friends with the annoying git. But, as long as he didn't have to deal with the antics caused by Malfoy all year, that would be great. In fact, it would be more than great, it would be...pleasant.
"Wouldn't it look a little suspicious if I suddenly wanted to call a truce with Malfoy and he kept writing me letters and I didn't answer them?" Harry asked of them.
"But they aren't even nice letters!" Ron cried, grabbing one of them. "'Saint Potter,'" he read in his most accurate Malfoy voice. "'How is life at the Weasel's? Give him a good kick in the shin for me.' What kind of person on a truce writes things like that?"
Harry shrugged. He had the letter with Malfoy's admission of his hobby of piano playing folded up in his pocket. Contrary to Malfoy's assumption, he hadn't shown the letter to either Ron nor Hermione, nor anyone else. He knew Malfoy would die if that ever got out, and he didn't really want to hurt Malfoy right now. He hadn't done anything particularly heinous yet. Once he did, the Piano Secret would leak out though.
Curious, Hermione took the letter from Ron and began reading through the others. "This isn't Malfoy's normal attitude. I mean, the words are the right words, but...I don't know, it just doesn't seem as malicious as he normally would be. Maybe he's really trying for this truce."
In the piano letter, Malfoy had also admitted a few other things to Harry: that he was alone in the house most of the time, with Narcissa gone more often than not. Harry took that to mean that Malfoy was truly lonely. The underlying words were, "I have nobody to talk to, and I am lonely."
"I feel kinda sorry for him," Harry admitted, running his thumb along the folded edge of the letter. "I don't think he's really all that cruel underneath everything."
Hermione and Ron stared at Harry as if he'd grown a second head. "Harry, are you all right?" Ron asked. "You don't feel ill, do you?"
"Why on earth would you feel sorry for Draco Malfoy? He's been nothing but a jerk since we met him!" Hermione told him agitatedly.
Shaking his head, Harry resigned himself to the fact that they wouldn't understand. After a week or so of trading letters with Malfoy, it was easy to read between the lines of arrogance into what he was intending to say. "Saint Potter" was Malfoy's way of saying that Harry was a good person, which wasn't exactly true in Harry's mind, but he didn't want to refute what Malfoy said. It would have only caused a fight.
"It was a stupid thing to say," Harry said at last. Not that stupid, they just don't get it. I don't suppose they would. They hate Malfoy more than I do--they have more reason to hate him than I do. He calls Hermione a 'mudblood' all the time, and he calls Ron 'Weasel' and makes fun of him all the time. He really doesn't pick on me all that much, just my friends.
Stretching, Harry slid from the top of Ron's bed and flashed a forced smile at his friends. "I think I'm going to go hang out with Ginny for a bit, if you don't mind?"
Hermione and Ron exchanged glances and the sixteen-year-old witch flashed Harry a knowing grin. "All right, Harry. See you around!"
Quickly, Harry ducked from the room and made his way to the Weasleys' backyard, planning some quality time to mope and think. So much had been happening lately, especially with Sirius's death, his newly forged truce with Malfoy, and private lessons with Dumbledore...what was happening to his world? It kept changing so suddenly, all the time. People would come into his life and just as swiftly leave it, by choice or by death or by whatever means.
The sound of an owl overhead brought Harry's attention crashing back to earth and he immediately recognized the beautiful plummage of Draco Malfoy's owl, Circe. Strange, mused Harry. I wasn't expecting Circe until tomorrow.
Wait...expecting?
Circe wheeled downward to land upon Harry's offered arm and waited patiently for the young black-haired wizard to untie the parchment from her leg. Hooting her gratitude, she immediately took flight once free of her parcel, disappearing into the horizon.
Potter:
She destroyed the piano and the music.
D.M.
Not certain he read the letter correctly, Harry gave it a second run. It was shorter than all of the rest of Malfoy's previous letters, and it expressed more distress than he had ever heard from his blond yearmate. Though Harry knew exactly what the letter said and he had deciphered what Malfoy was trying to convey, he was still puzzled as to who "she" could be.
Well, the only "she" I know he's in contact with, however briefly, is his mother, Harry reasoned. So it's not so farfetched to say that Narcissa Malfoy "destroyed the piano and the music." What that sentence really should be is, "She destroyed my piano and your music." But why would Narcissa want to get rid of a harmless piano? Is it too Muggle for the wizarding world? That must be the answer, unless she knew I sent him that music.
Sighing, Harry leaned against a nearby tree and reread the letter again.
I'm sorry, Malfoy. That piano must have meant a lot to you for you to write me and tell me about it. Everybody I come in contact with gets hurt, somehow. The parchment crumpled in Harry's hands as he pressed his newly formed fists to his face. That piano meant so much to you, and I got it taken away. Not even taken away...destroyed, gone, obliterated. Why does knowing me mean everybody gets hurt? Now Malfoy won't want that truce. I'm such an idiot! I never should have tried to make things easier on myself--I deserve everything I get. I'm a curse. I got Sirius killed, I got my parents killed, and I got the only thing Malfoy enjoyed taken away forever.
"Harry?"
The Boy Who Lived jumped up from his slumped position against the tree and hurried jammed the wrinkled letter into his pocket. "Ginny," he said, trying to keep the surprise and the strong emotions out of his voice. "What...what are you doing out here?"
Ginny Weasley, the youngest of the Weasley children, put her hands on her hips. "I think I should be asking you that question, Harry. Why were you curled up on the tree like that? Did something happen?"
Immediately, Harry shook his head. "No, nothing at all," he said, a little too quickly.
Studying him, the fifteen-year-old fifth year smiled gently at him. "It's not your fault, you know," she replied, her voice barely audible. "Sirius died because he was fighting for something he believed in." The kind smile on her face never faltered. "I think that's one of the best ways to die." She held her hand out to him. "Harry, Sirius died fighting for you because he believed in you. He died fighting for the Order of the Phoenix, because he believed in the Order. He died for himself, because he believed in himself."
Blinking quickly to fight back the tears that always welled up in his eyes whenever his godfather Sirius Black's name was mentioned, Harry reached out and took hold of Ginny's warm fingers, the letter in his pocket forgotten. "That still doesn't change the fact that he died because of me...everyone I come in contact with dies or gets hurt somehow."
"You don't honestly believe that, do you, Harry?" Ginny asked him. "You can't honestly believe that you got Sirius killed? Harry, he died because of--"
Squeezing her hand, Harry pulled Ginny to him for a hug. "Thanks for trying, Ginny...but it was my fault, and no matter what, I don't want to be talked out of it. I want to know that I got him killed, and I want to remember that."
Ginny pushed him away, looked up at him with her piercing eyes, and hurried back into the Burrow, but not before stiffling a sob. Sighing, Harry just added that to the list of people he had hurt.
Potter may not have noticed it, but Draco surely did--Potter forgot to answer his letter after he notified the Boy Who Lived about Narcissa's prompt removal of the piano. All the blond boy had left of his precious pasttime was a jar full of ashes, and the faint crumblings of the music book Potter had bought for him. Now Draco had nothing to amuse himself with and just spent the dwindling days of summer in the gardens at the rear of Malfoy Manor as Circe circled overhead.
Without the music to distract him, the pulsing mark of a conscript of the Dark Lord caught most of his attention. The oddly shaped thing seemed to change its finite details at will, perhaps depending on Voldemort's mood, or Draco's mood, or how many new slaves he had. He remembered the burning sensation he experienced when he had threatened Narcissa before she destroyed his piano--it felt like frozen fingers pushing up against his skin, so cold it burned.
It didn't hurt to touch it physically, Draco found out as he sat himself upon the edge of the black marble fountain at the very center of the gardens. The stone was so smooth and colorless it was quite difficult to discern what shape the body of the water vessel took and after sixteen years, Draco still didn't know. He reached out and touched the round belly of one of the figures--perhaps a pixy or nymph of some type. The stone had absorbed so much sunlight and warmth that it scalded his fingertips upon contact but still Draco held it.
Droplets of water splashed onto the young dark wizard from the three cascading faucets of the fountain and did little to cool him from the summer heat. Finally, when he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers, Draco drew away from the smooth marble. Raw red skin, almost the crimson shade of blood, greeted him as he inspected the damage, and blisters had begun to form around the edges of the damaged skin. His wand hand would be unusable for weeks if he didn't repair this quickly...
It didn't hurt, really. It stung for a few moments and smelled like cooking meat for slightly longer, but then...then it went away as the numbness set in.
Suddenly, Draco stepped into the shin-high waters of the fountain and pressed both of his hands, fingers and palms, against the heated black marble of the statue.
Harry realized five days after Malfoy had sent his last letter that no more had come.
Then he remembered the letter he had shoved in his pocket when Ginny had startled him.
"The letter," Harry muttered, rushing up to his room. "Where did I put it?"
Turning his room upside down and inside out, Harry discovered that he couldn't find the letter anywhere. He remembered that it was about Narcissa getting rid of Malfoy's piano...oh, yeah. Hurriedly, Harry snatched a piece of parchment from the stack he had and began writing. He apologized for the lateness of the letter and began to apologize for causing Malfoy trouble.
It ended up being a two-page letter that he sent with Hedwig.
Harry did not hear back from Malfoy again.