Black Truth
Chapter Thirty-Two: Wildfire News
Harry had never seen the student body of Hogwarts as attentive as when Dumbledore announced the four day suspension of twenty-three students from the school. No names were mentioned, though as Harry looked around the Great Hall it was rather obvious where the gaps in the houses were. As his eyes had done countless times during the day, he sought out Draco who was sitting calmly at the breakfast table. He had briefly appeared in the Great Hall for meals on Sunday, but had insisted on going to classes on Monday.
"Harry, you look more upset than Malfoy," Ron muttered. "Relax. If Malfoy was going to break down, he would have done it already."
"I think he's doing the right thing" Hermione added. Harry looked at her in surprise. "The faster you get back into your life after an incident like that, the better it is in the long run. People find the routine of their lives helps them move past it."
"But that routine has been broken already, hasn't it?" Ron asked around a mouthful of eggs.
"Yeah, because normally Draco gets a letter right about now," Harry muttered.
Hermione winced and Ron tried not to look sympathetic for his long time rival.
"What about you and Malfoy?" Hermione asked after a minute. "Why aren't you two in trouble?"
"I don't know. Dumbledore didn't say." Harry shrugged "But if I had to guess, I would say that he didn't want to draw attention to it."
"Hmm?" Ron frowned in the midst of drinking his pumpkin juice.
"Oh I get it!" Hermione exclaimed before adding in a much quieter tone. "As long as he keeps you and Draco out of it, then nothing about Voldemort is exposed to the school."
"Kinda like he did when Malfoy's... dad showed up in Hogwarts?" Ron asked.
"Exactly."
There was a rustle of wings throughout the Great Hall as the mail began to arrive. Harry's eyes snapped towards Draco, but the blonde looked... well, he looked like he did normally, yet he was much too tense for him to be acting truly normal. Also, his clothes made any pretense of "normality" disappear faster than an invisibility spell.
Draco wore what Hermione had informed him as traditional mourning clothing in the Wizarding World. Underneath his outer school robes, he wore clothing of the colors found on the Malfoy family crest, colors that represented the Malfoy family. Clothing of those colors would only be worn on three occasions, Hermione said: when there was a birth, when there was a wedding, and when there was a death. The occasion was specified by the armbands worn on the cuffs of the robes blue or rose for a birth (depending on the gender of the baby), white for a wedding, and a dark blood red for a death. Draco's cuffs were so dark red that it was hard to tell where the black of his robes ended and the red began, and looked so bloody that it seemed as though he had dipped his robes in his own blood.
Draco had gone to Snape that morning to get permission to violate the school uniform in such a way. Snape had let him without hesitation.
"Harry… you should look at this," Ron said in a voice that told Harry something was wrong.
Harry looked at the paper in Ron's hand and groaned. "I guess they made the death public?"
"Not just that Harry," Hermione told him, looking over from where she sat perusing another student's paper. "Look at the first and second pages."
Wincing Harry took the paper and scanned the headline on the first page.
Lucius Malfoy Found Dead With Dark Mark Blazing Over Malfoy Manor
Hoping that the next page didn't also have to do with Lucius Malfoy's death, Harry opened the paper. When he saw the title, he suddenly wished it did have to do with Lucius Malfoy's death.
A Secret Love Affair Revealed: Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter
"Oh no."
"Oh yes." Hermione looked livid. "When I get my hands on her, I'll squash her like the bug she is!"
Harry's eyes fell to the name of the writer of the second article and he practically hissed at the name. Rita Skeeter.
Ron took the paper from Harry's shaking hands and began to read the second article for himself, cringing every two minutes. "You want to know the damage, mate?"
"Why not? I'll learn it sooner or later," Harry grumbled into his drink.
"Well, from the way she says it, you two might as well have been soul mates from birth. It talks about Malfoy being a Veriae, though it doesn't say much other than a "cousin of the well known Veela". It also says that you two have been sharing rooms since the beginning of this year, which is true, but then goes on to describe your relationship, the detail of which is utterly false and makes me sick."
"Doesn't sound bad so far," Harry muttered.
"Oh it gets better, Harry," Hermione seethed at the article. "It talks about how Malfoy has no choice in his soul mate and says, and I quote: 'In such a time of grief as Draco Malfoy is going through over the loss of his father, Lucius Malfoy, he will become more dependant on his mate' – I can't believe she actually uses that term! – 'and will be vulnerable to any suggestions he might get from Harry Potter'." Hermione snorted in disgust.
"It makes it sound like he's your-"
"Don't say it Ron," Harry seethed.
Harry was so absorbed in hating Rita Skeeter that he didn't notice a large barn owl drop a letter onto Draco's lap. He did notice the sudden movement from the Slytherin table as Draco stood and abruptly left the room, their eyes meeting for a moment as he did so.
Harry nodded to his friends and followed the blonde out of the room.
Draco stalked down towards the dungeons, pausing only to snarl the password at Medusa before walking into their rooms. Harry followed him silently, ignoring the portrait's talk about how the poor boy was still distressed from whatever Harry had done and he'd better fix it.
"Did you see the Prophet?" Harry asked as Draco began pacing the room.
"Why would I? I knew what was going to be there," Draco muttered.
"On the first page or the second page?" Harry queried, leaning against the portrait door.
"The second page?" Draco asked.
"Yeah. The page with the article about your and my secret love affair."
All color drained from Draco's face. "You're kidding."
"Nope. The entire Wizarding World knows you're a Veriae now. They know that we're rooming together. I don't know if they'll believe that we're sleeping together or not, but that's there too. Oh, and there's the implication that I might be using you for my own selfish gain somewhere in there as well."
"Bloody hell," Draco snarled, as he dropped an opened letter on the couch. "Well, that explains this then."
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"Read it yourself. I'm going to go shower."
"We have Potions first period you know" Harry warned, knowing that this kind of shower for Draco would be a long one.
"Oh I know, and if I actually make it to that class at all I will be very surprised."
"I should be making a comment about the unfairness of it all" Harry muttered as his eyes scanned the letter. "Who's Mr. Archeon?"
"Mr. Achilles Archeon is the man who looked after my father's will while he was alive" Draco explained over his shoulder as he left the room.
Harry frowned slightly as he read the tiny, scrawling script. Something about reading Draco's father's will after his wake, which was in three days. It assured Draco that while the Malfoy Gringotts accounts were frozen until the reading of the will, Draco's personal one would remain open for his use, as it was not owned by his father at his father's time of death, but by Draco himself.
It also said that after the divorce his father had made Draco's godfather Professor Severus Snape, Draco's legal guardian if he should pass away before Draco reached legality. Then, and Harry assumed that this was the part Draco had been upset about, it stated that Narcissa Malfoy had already declared her intention to challenge the transfer of Draco's guardianship from herself to Snape and the man wrote that he could only assume that she would also challenge any inheritance Draco might receive from his departed father. But, it said, even though Draco would not reach the legal age of seventeen until June fifth of that year, a little less than four months away, in light of certain new developments there may be a way for Draco to enter into legality despite his age, should the rumors prove true.
Should the rumors prove true? Harry gulped. The man couldn't be talking about that rumor, could he? And even if he was, why would Harry's relationship (if you could call a few scattered kisses and one make-out session a relationship) with Draco have anything to do with Draco becoming legal in the Wizarding World before his birthday?
Harry caught up with Hermione a few minutes before breakfast ended as she made her way down to the dungeons for Potions.
"What are the ways that you can become legal in the Wizarding World?" Harry asked breathlessly, thoughts jumbled in his head, and gasping from his run up from his and Draco's rooms.
Hermione looked surprised for a moment before answering, "The legal age in the Wizarding World is seventeen, so anyone becomes legal if they turn seventeen. However, in older wizarding custom, marriages were arranged at birth and the children to be married were usually engaged at fifteen. This started the tradition that a wizard or witch could become legal in the Wizarding World after becoming engaged. They needed that…" Hermione searched for the right word, "flexibility… in order to plan their weddings. And the guy in the relationship had to be able to provide for his wife, and so on." The look on Hermione's face showed exactly how enamored with that idea she was… not very much at all. "Why do you ask, Harry?" she questioned him a second later, suddenly curious.
"No reason. Just wondered," Harry said quickly.
Hermione didn't buy it for an instant. "Harry, what's going on?" She paused. "This has to do with Malfoy doesn't it?"
"No! Well… yes, it kinda does, but it's not what you're thinking!" Harry sputtered as Hermione's face held a look of disapproval. "And we're going to be late to Potions if we don't hurry," Harry changed the subject, grateful for a distraction. He wasn't ready to have a conversation with Hermione about what she had just told him, not yet.
Harry sat on his rarely-slept-in bed paying absolutely no attention to the Transfiguration essay he was supposed to be working on. He'd gone through the rest of the day in the exact same manner he still didn't know how he managed to get through Potions without destroying himself utterly by his lack of concentration he couldn't even remember going to Divination and Transfiguration was all a blur to him. But somehow he found himself here, after dinner, supposedly working on his Transfiguration essay while Draco wrote back to that Archeon person.
It was crazy, utterly and horribly crazy. And yet he hadn't been able to take his eyes off Draco for the rest of the day when the blonde was around. That was probably why Transfiguration was so blurry and he had no idea about what he should be writing this essay on. His thoughts were all scrambled up in his head, popping into conscious thought at peculiar moments. 'Why was he so angry about the mention of those rumors?' had slipped into his mind when Snape was talking about skewering butterfly wings… or at least that's what Harry hoped he had been talking about. 'Maybe he wasn't, maybe he was just angry because of what Narcissa Malfoy had done. Or maybe he was angry about the veiled comment about the rumors,' had repeated around in his head during Divination. And the worst, 'What if he was angry because he would never want me romantically?' popped up right around dinnertime. Harry had almost choked on the air he was breathing, causing Ron to ask him if he was ok and Hermione to look at him suspiciously.
"Harry would you mind if you stopped staring at me? You haven't blinked in the past five minutes. It's rather disturbing."
Harry blinked quickly a few times at Draco's words. When he looked back at the blonde, Draco had returned to his letter and gave no sign of wanting to ask why Harry had been staring at him. It was strange but a small relief to Harry.
Whether Draco knew, guessed, or didn't care about what Harry had been thinking of that evening was not broached by either of them, but Harry couldn't help thinking as he fell asleep that night that Draco had probably guessed.