Chapter Eleven: Loggerheads
Hermione followed Harry and Malfoy back to the Ministry within the hour after settling things with Viktor. He would stay for a few days, saying he would Floo back for some clothing and other necessary items, unwilling to yet leave her despite her assurances. He was deeply suspicious of Malfoy, averse to let go of his Death Eater past as yet, and concerned for Hermione's safety. Hermione had decided not to argue the point with him; he could be as stubborn as her when he had a mind to be, and she really didn't want to waste time disagreeing over a moot point.
Despite all her reassurances that she was perfectly safe, Hermione could not deny that she was pleased and somewhat relieved that Viktor was staying. They hadn't seen each other in a while, and it was nice to know that he cared about her well-being enough to go to the lengths that he had. Truth be told, it would also be a nice change to have some company in the evening. She was a little concerned that he would get bored, cooped up in her house all day however, but he knew how to get to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, and she'd shown him on previous occasions how to work the television, even though he regarded the object with a degree of suspicion like most wizards. Viktor had assured her that he would be far from bored, indicating her extensive bookshelves, and that staying in her home for a few days would be a welcome reprieve as his fans in Bulgaria were currently going through a particularly persistent phase.
When she'd told him enough information about her part of the case for him to guess what might be helpful, he'd put through a Floo call to a contact of his and sourced her a few books on Dark magic by Bulgarian authors that she hadn't heard of, most of which dated to Grindlewald's time, and she returned to the Ministry with them under her arm.
Only Malfoy was in the office, sitting with a moody expression behind his desk, checking through his papers.
Draco had mixed a tonic to quell the prickle in his belly, but it had done nothing to assuage the hot flushes that boiled through him whenever he let his mind return to the situation between Granger and Krum, and it was irritating him in the extreme. The scowl he was turning on his papers ought to have turned them to ash.
Hermione offered him a tentative smile, ready to meet his eyes when he looked up as she slipped around the door. "Where's Harry?"
"Meeting with the Minister," Malfoy replied tersely, not even looking up at her.
Draco was seething for no discernible reason. It wasn't that he had to work on a Sunday – in fact he had become quite accustomed to giving up his weekends when he was first setting up his companies – but this Sunday was turning out even more rotten than it had initially promised to, and he did not like how it had done so. Granger had been with Krum nearly an hour. An hour. And he had no intention of being anything more than barely civil to the woman.
Hermione frowned slightly. Malfoy really was behaving quite oddly today. But then it was a Sunday. He'd probably had plans that had been disrupted by the unexpected murders, and he was new to this kind of work. He hadn't been to the crime scene of the first group murder, and although she didn't doubt that he'd seen some horrendous things while Voldemort had lived in his home, facing up to a crime scene as bloody as that when one of the victims was the father of a girl you had been friends with couldn't be pleasant for anyone.
She shrugged, and went to her desk.
"Viktor thought of some books that might help," she said as she pulled them out, turning and proffering them to Malfoy for a look in case they meant anything to him.
Draco's lip curled at the mention of the Seeker, but his face was impassive by the time she turned to him. He allowed a brief glance at the unfamiliar titles, shrugged, and returned to his work.
"Hopefully they'll be useful," Hermione continued doggedly, her tone determinedly light and cheerful.
Draco grunted.
Hermione held in a sigh, and gave him up as a bad job. If it had been Harry or Ron she would have asked what was bothering them, but he was Malfoy. Clearly he wanted to wallow and be cross, and he was already resenting her intrusion.
She opened the books, waving her wand in a complex motion that allowed her brain to translate the Bulgarian as she read it, and began to read.
Draco's poor mood continued throughout the rest of the day, and was only exacerbated when Granger left for lunch with Krum in Diagon Alley. Potter had returned by then, looking as stressed as they all felt, and with the news that none of the surviving members of the Wizengamot that had sat on his trial in fifth year had spoken of the matter to anyone or been attacked within the time period for the murders. It was depressing news, given that it had been one of their most promising leads, and Granger had left shortly after, so there was little more Draco could do than angrily straighten his papers as he and Potter continued to work and eat in silence. For all his distemper, he'd not rejected her request to take over the Arithmancy and Rune work entirely to let her focus better on finding a cure for the Mark.
He kept checking his watch, marking every ten minutes that she had been absent, grumbling internally to himself, his expression darkening to the point where even Harry could see it would be foolish to speak to him.
By the time Granger returned and they went to train later in the afternoon, his mood and deteriorated even further.
Hermione did her best to be understanding. She knew next to nothing about Malfoy's daily life. He could have any number of issues to be dealing with at home. She might have been one of the very few he had ever allowed into his mind, perhaps even the only person he'd ever let into his mind, and she had a unique insight into him because of it, but that didn't mean she instantly understood every aspect of him and his behaviour. He wasn't the sort to invite confidences, or the sort you casually chatted to about how the weekend had been, so who he was beyond work was completely shut off to her. For all she knew he went to the opera every night, and was a moonlight cubist painter, or else really enjoyed rap music and skateboarding; he could do anything for leisure and she wouldn't have a clue about it.
She could trust him and work with him, and there were times when she thought she could even be friends with him, but his behaviour today was trying her patience in the extreme. It was ordinary for him to be tacit in his remarks, to only speak when he considered it absolutely necessary, and to wear a permanent mask of inscrutability. But she had seen his grins and smiles, she'd heard him laugh, and even make jokes. He wasn't just the cold front that he presented in public. The Malfoy she duelled today was none of that. He was snippy, scowling, and if pushed too far would make remarks that verged on spiteful.
"OK, stop!" Hermione put up her wand, crossing her arms and glaring at Malfoy across the moving staircases that were their terrain today, a more complex emulation of those at Hogwarts.
Draco slowly lowered his wand, wary of a ruse, his eyes narrowed. "What, Granger?" he snapped. "It's been barely half an hour."
"I've had enough of your behaviour today. I've tried to understand it, I've tried to accommodate it, I've tried to help get you out of whatever rut you've stuck yourself in, but this is it! Either tell me what's wrong so we can work through it, or put it to one side for the day. You're being downright unpleasant."
Draco's eyes narrowed, the grey hardening to silver. "I don't recall making any undertaking to be pleasant," he replied coldly. "And I don't recall inviting you to take an interest in my business. How about the part where I never asked you for help or understanding?" he snarled, rising up as the staircase he was on shifted.
"Well what else do you expect me to do when you're giving an impression of being a bad tempered porcupine?" Hermione demanded angrily, irritated that the staircases had put her lower than him.
"It's my business! I didn't ask for your interference!" Draco shot back, his voice rising to echo on the stone walls around him, his blood boiling with irrational anger. "We're not friends in case you hadn't noticed, Granger," he added viciously.
"Well you'd better get used to interference in your business because that's what happens when you work with people instead of dictate to them!" Hermione bellowed back, ignoring his remark about friendship despite the sting, the staircases shifting to lift her above him now. "That's what happens when you're colleagues with people. You're not in an isolated bubble! The way you behave has an effect on us – you can't expect me not to want to do something about it when it makes you behave like this! If you scowled anymore you'd turn into a gargoyle!"
"Well what about the way you behave, Granger?" Draco snarled savagely, his mind darting to Krum, anger rising with the image of him like a blistering wave in his stomach.
Hermione frowned, nonplussed. "What do you mean, Malfoy?"
Draco snarled wordlessly, turning away.
"I'm not finished!" Hermione called, racing up the steps after him to leap across the void between the staircases as they swung past each other, landing at the top of his and rushing down after him.
Draco abrupted stopped, rounding on her as Granger skidded to a stop behind him. "Well I am!"
They were almost nose to nose, Hermione on the step above Malfoy, and they glared into each other's eyes, level for once, panting.
Their proximity was doing odd things to Draco, his anger being overtaken with something else that was quite foreign. She smelled damp and fresh, like beeswax and flowers after rain, the sweat curling her hair into fine ringlets across her brow and about her ears. He could see the individual droplets that had gathered on her skin, darkening her eyebrows and collecting in the bow of her lips and the base of her throat, the trails that they made from the nape of her neck glinting and running down over her collarbones and into the scoop of her singlet. He could study, up close, the fire that the frustration brought into her eyes, bright and scorching as she tried to find out what his problem was, lighting up something in him that wanted to respond, and not with anger. The familiarity of her and the unfamiliarity of the emotions and observations she inspired unsettled him, and he ripped away before Granger could even open her mouth.
Hermione remained where Malfoy left her, rooted to the spot by strange sensations she hadn't felt in years, and others that she'd never felt before at all.
Viktor still made her blush like a schoolgirl. He'd been the first boy to show such marked interest in her, to admit that she was the person he would miss most in the world when he'd only known her a few weeks. That kind of feeling didn't simply go away. But that was all there was between them; a giddy, exhilarated passing dart of infatuation. They'd tried for more, but the timing hadn't been right. Maybe, if it had, she could have learnt what it was to be in love, truly in love, rather than mere attraction, but they hadn't had the chance. With Ron it had been different again. Friendly affection that had deepened to more, but become confused until they both realised things were best between them when they were friends. While she loved him as a sister, that was the end of it. Romantically they weren't suited.
Now echoes of those feelings were returning along with new ones that she had no understanding of and was too wary to examine closer, all of them jumbled and confused, mixed up with her anger and bewilderment from her confrontation with Malfoy. She didn't understand it. Or him. If he wasn't so weird about opening up and appearing vulnerable she might at least be able to begin understanding, but no, he had avoided talking through his problem and chosen to argue instead like most boys. Confused prat. He made her insides flutter, and as much as she didn't want to admit it, she knew what that meant. But there was no time for acting on or even the consideration of such things. She sighed, frowning at his retreating figure.
He couldn't actually go anywhere, not while they were in the S.T.E. – the simulation would just keep bringing him back to the central arena. But she could tell there was little point in their continuing training for the day, and if she trapped him in the simulation he would only get angrier. She lifted her wand, dismissing the spell, and as the stone walls and staircases faded, she could see Malfoy striding off across the arena, making for the stairwell.
Draco determinedly ignored Granger for the rest of the day. He didn't look at her, he didn't speak to her, and he certainly did not think of her. Or so he had planned. He snuck glances at her across his arm when she wasn't looking, his mind dwelling on their confrontation and the weird morass of feelings inhabiting his stomach in an incomprehensible tangle. He prided himself on understanding these things, of his control over his deportment and emotions. He had let that slip earlier.
Malfoys did not simply lose control. They were cool, calm, collected – impassive. They should be looked upon as ice sculptures; elegant and glittering, above ordinary folk in their intelligence, bearing, and station. He had shattered that image today.
He'd shattered it before, when he'd lost his nerve to kill Dumbledore, and when he'd given in to the fears haunting his every move in the bathroom and Potter, Potter, his school time enemy had been the one to discover him, shaking with fear and crying. But this was different. There was nothing to push him to such an extreme this time, and yet he was being affected. It unnerved him that whatever this was, this pulling itch he had about Granger, could break his composure so effortlessly. Such habits should not be disrupted easily. He had spent his life cultivating them, honing them until they occurred effortlessly and without thought on his part. But now they were slipping through his fingers like draining sand.
He blamed it on the Legilimency. There was no other explanation for it. He had granted her access to his deepest self, and now some part of her had lodged in him and try as he might he simply could not eject her from his thoughts. He doubted that the same was happening to her. After all, he hadn't been into her mind. The imbalance soured his expression. Regardless, they had some kind of a connection now – he hesitated to think of the word bond – and he had no intention whatsoever of humouring it.
His decision was a simple one. To ignore the itch. To deny the pull. It was dangerous and unpredictable – an unknown that he could not yet control.
He glanced over at Granger again. She was immersed in her research, reading those new books the Bulgarian had given her. He repressed a silent sneer at the idea that they might help, but couldn't help but admire her tenacity. She had admitted herself that what she was doing was in all likelihood a lost cause, and yet it didn't stop her from ploughing on with it. But perhaps that was simply pig-headedness – if he knew anything about Granger it was that she was certainly not short of that particular attribute. She was obdurate and unyielding, and he could tell that determination was what made her strong. He should disparage her single-mindedness – it was causing her problems that recognition of the impossibility of the task she had set herself would sweep away, but, try as he might, he could not think poorly of her for it.
Draco forced his eyes back to his own work. Clearly his resolution would be harder to cleave to than he had initially anticipated. He frowned, fixing his eyes firmly on the words before him even though his brain was not yet engaged enough to understand them. I will not look. I will not.
Hermione's attention was divided.
She wasn't happy that she and Malfoy had argued, or that he seemed to have decided to ignore her because of it. It was a childish solution to the problem that left it open and unresolved. If it became detrimental to the case it would be her fault, and there could be nothing to set them back – they faced enough obstacles without ones of their own creation. She should have known better than to take him to task on the matter, but she'd felt a kind of comradeship growing between them from their training sessions, and perhaps being let into his mind had given her a false sense of security about how she could talk to him. She had talked to him as she would to a friend, with too much truth, and now she could easily see how foolish she had been. They weren't friends. They were colleagues, and colleagues with a difficult history. Colleagues who used to be enemies.
Hermione sighed, turning a page, and trying to avoid the detailed description of a curse that made the victim's finger and toe nails grown inwards. However else Malfoy might have changed in the intervening years, it seemed that he was determined to remain reserved – cool and cut off from others, and that frustrated her more than anything else. She knew he was not that. She knew there was more to him than his implacable façade. He had a heart beating behind the shell as capable of passions as any other. She was used to men not wanting to talk about their problems or their feelings, used to teasing it out of them, but Malfoy almost seemed to have a violent reaction against such displays of what she supposed he considered to be vulnerability and weakness.
She refrained from tutting irritably at the thought, an image of Lucius Malfoy swimming before her eyes. It was all about the conditioning. Of course the son would emulate the father. She frowned. Men. Told to be too damn stoic for their own good…and too stubborn to admit otherwise. Think they have to have hearts of stone. Pah! They are no more untouchable than any person is invulnerable.
She made a note of a spell to do with bloodletting, glancing surreptitiously over to Malfoy before sighing again, shaking her head slightly and returning to the book.
Draco left the Ministry early, flooing directly to the Manor. He wasn't in the mood for a confrontation with his parents, but the sooner it was over, the better; such things did not diminish with the passage of time.
His mother was waiting for him in the sitting room, and his father soon joined them, sitting beside Narcissa, the two of them united in their disapproval.
"Explain yourself," Lucius ordered curtly.
Draco frowned slightly, but reined in his temper. It would not do to start by shouting at his father. "I am not merely consulting for the Ministry this time – I am an active member of the case," he began levelly.
"And what is this case?" Narcissa asked calmly, laying a restraining hand upon her husband's, purposefully interlinking her fingers with his.
"It involves the murders that have been in the papers recently. The seven individual killings, and now the group murders. Our evening was interrupted last night because a second group had been killed."
Narcissa nodded slowly, taking it in.
Lucius snorted. "The Ministry is weak," he sneered. "They won't solve it."
Draco's eyes flashed for a moment, but he said nothing, his jaws clamped together.
"Lucius…" Narcissa murmured the rebuke.
Lucius continued as though his wife had not spoken, "And this case involves that Mudblood?"
Draco and Narcissa's voices melded in a combined exclamation of disapproval and reprimand, "Father!" "Lucius!"
"I will not hear you call her that!" Draco snarled.
"Does the Ministry's influence reach so far that a man may not speak his mind within his own home without being scolded by his son?!" Lucius spat, the fragile control that had been restraining his ever volatile temper now broken. "What happened to make you side with blood traitors and scum?"
"You will not use that word, Lucius," Narcissa interjected warningly before Draco could lash out with a scathing rejoinder. "Not if you wish to remain out of Azkaban. You need to remember that!"
"Azkaban! Azkaban! Can I not make a single move nor voice a single word without some person or other holding the threat of that place over my head?!" Lucius raged, his eyes haunted by the shadows of his nightmares, aggravation rather than fury overtaking his expression. "Is it not enough to have gone there? To have served my time in that cesspool without being constantly reminded of it with threats to return?! Can I not even be afforded the opportunity to try to leave it behind?!"
"You can leave it behind when you abandon your blood prejudices, Father." Draco said coldly. "I have forsaken your beliefs. I have learned to think for myself, and I have my own principles now. If you cannot do the same then I will have no choice but to report your continued attitudes to the Ministry."
Narcissa let out a gasp of horror. Lucius was on his feet in an instant however, ripping his hand from his wife's, enraged betrayal in his expression.
"You dare threaten me, boy?! You dare turn on your own father?!"
Draco joined him on the carpet, his anger surging and rising in response to his father's, writhing out of his control, and he realised for the first time that, tall as his father was, he now outstripped him. "Turn on a father who all but abandoned me to the tender mercies of a creature without morals – a monster without mercy?!" he roared, his voice cracking as the tide of his past rose up to swamp him. "I was a teenager! I wasn't even seventeen. A boy – not yet of age! And you, your quest for glory, your blind devotion to his doctrines, you would rather cleave to that than protect the life of your only son! You spent your life enslaved to him and you would have seen me do so as well! It would be a grave betrayal indeed for a son to turn on his father if there were something for me to betray! You betrayed me then; you don't have my trust! You forfeited the right to it when you let him brand this into me!" Draco ripped up his sleeve, thrusting his Dark Mark forwards. The edges were still inflamed, and it seemed a few shades darker than normal, but no one was examining it.
Narcissa let out a little gasping kind of sob. She had watched her husband and son begin the fight with a heavy heart, knowing that an argument had been coming since the day Draco decided to turn his back on the beliefs of his ancestors. She had been waiting for it the moment Lucius returned home. But she hadn't expected this. Families such as theirs did not rake up the past. Resentments were left to simmer and putrefy, not faced head-on. One was meant to maintain the façade – to carry on as though a heart was merely another organ that kept you alive, not something to sustain emotional damage.
"I was in Azkaban!" Lucius bellowed, his own façade of anger beginning to crack, his true emotions seeping through into his eyes. "I didn't intend to fail the Dark Lord! I didn't intend to be captured by the wretched Order and sent there! What would you have had me do when he ordered me to retrieve the prophecy? Refuse the Dark Lord? You know as well as I Draco that it would have meant the death of us all! Do you honestly believe I wouldn't have done anything else if I could have? I took the only choice I had to keep us all alive!"
"AND IT NEARLY MADE ME A MURDERER!" Draco screamed. "I WAS SIXTEEN, AND I HAD TO PLOT TO MURDER MY HEADMASTER!" He shook his head, eyes wide and staring, beyond all control now. It felt good to let the hurt come out from the cracks in his damaged soul, all the dark, knotted up poison that had bubbled like acid in his guts for so many years was at last being evacuated. But what had begun as a leak had risen to a gushing torrent that wouldn't stop until it was all out. "I had to betray the safety of the people I went to school with when I let you into the castle. I didn't care for them, but do you know what it is like making that decision?" he whispered. "Do you?! Do you know what it's like making a single decision that means you're responsible for every death and injury that happens after it? I had to let you all in so you could kill children. Don't think I didn't see the bodies. Don't think I wasn't aware what was going on. I knew what would happen. Death Eaters don't stun. I tried to block it out to make it easier, but I knew I was letting in murderers to a school. I knew that people – kids and my teachers – would die that night. I knew that if I didn't have the courage to say no to Him that I would be throwing their lives for him to grind into the ground like insects beneath his feet. And I did it anyway."
Narcissa's hands were to her mouth, and she was rocking back and forth silently as the tears slid down her cheeks.
Draco forced himself not to look at her. He had never spoken about any of this to anyone. His mother had sometimes broached the topic of the past with him, but he had always shrugged her off, and she, knowing her son, and allowed it.
"You took the choice you had to in order to survive," Lucius replied harshly, breathing heavily but no longer shouting.
Draco stared at his father with disbelieving eyes. "I let other people die instead of me. That's what I chose. That's what I allowed. Because I was too scared to say no. I was too worried about saving my own sorry hide to protect the lives of hundreds of innocents. I wasn't Harry Potter – I couldn't sacrifice myself for any of them because I didn't care enough." He shook his head. "I was sixteen. What kind of parent puts their child in that situation?"
"I told you, we had no other option," Lucius snarled between gritted teeth. "You know that! From Azkaban I could do nothing. The Dark Lord–"
"YOU COULD HAVE GONE TO THE ORDER BEFORE IT GOT TO THAT POINT!" Draco bellowed, fury in him now. He had thought about the circumstances leading up to his sixth year so many times now he was sure he had considered every possible outcome. And he was not sure whether he could forgive his father. "YOU COULD HAVE RUN! YOU COULD HAVE UNBENT YOUR PRIDE ENOUGH TO RESCIND YOUR BELIEFS AND SAVE YOUR FAMILY FROM YOUR INSANE LEADER! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A COWARD!"
"AND HE WOULD HAVE KILLED US ALL," Lucius roared back, his usually pale face now crimson. "Do you honestly believe that Dumbledore's Order could have protected us?" he sneered. "They couldn't even protect themselves or him! I did what I had to do, boy, and you should be grateful."
Draco shook his head, unable to believe his ears. Had his father heard nothing that he'd said? "I am no longer a boy, Father," he fought the tremble of anger in his voice, "though I remain your son. I do not threaten – I warn. There is no room for those beliefs anymore. If you continue you in them you leave me no choice but to go to the Ministry. And you will not insult my colleagues."
"I will insult whom I choose!" Lucius snarled back. "You belittle your ancestors and your blood by speaking so! You betray the family from which you come, and yet you behave as though working with filth such as her is not the basest of insults! How is it that I have lived long enough to see my own son so weak, my family's line destroyed?!"
"It is no insult to work with her, Father!" Draco lifted his voice a new notches to carry over his father's, anger of a different kind beginning to fill him. He was calm fury now. "Hermione outstripped all the students of Hogwarts – regardless of their blood status – and I am certain that without her involvement on this case we would stand little chance of succeeding." Draco felt a savage pleasure lift in his chest at the shocked expression that crossed his father's hate-twisted features when he spoke Granger's first name. Hermione. Her name was like a talisman. "She is more intelligent than most pure-bloods can claim to be and was strong enough to overlook our history together – something I never expected her to do. Something I had no right to expect her to. She treated you both with respect even though she was tortured in this house by a member of this family. I expect the very least from you in return. And," he delivered his final blow with a kind of savage joy, "if your legacy is to have a son who puts paid to the Malfoy blood-prejudice at last, then I am proud to weaken the line and destroy that most poisonous inheritance from my ancestors."
Draco turned, leaving his dumbstruck father where he stood.
"Good night, Mother," he said tersely as he passed.
Narcissa nodded, blinking tears from her eyes, and summoning her strength. "Good night, Draco. Thank you for explaining."
Draco nodded brusquely, continuing to the door. He paused there, halfway into the corridor, then turned back. "I came tonight to explain. And to warn you. Defected Death Eaters are targets for the murderer," he paused a moment. "I will check the wards before I leave."
WOOHOO! That's a tick on the regular updating schedule! Let's hope March gets a tick too!
This is absolutely one of my favourite chapters. I cried writing it, I still tear up reading it. Just UGH. DRACOOOO /3 This is also getting into the stuff I really love, which is the Malfoy family dynamic. There is so much tension and emotion and repression to work with.
I'm also a big fan of NOT repressing problems, so I make characters voice their feelings with glee. BECAUSE IT'S GOOD FOR YOU, OK.
We're also starting to build up to something of a little crescendo in a good few chapter's time, but look out for that ;)
Hope you enjoyed! :D
Please do review and/or favourite :) Tell me what you like or don't like :) Questions and speculations are always welcome :D As is incomprehensible flailing if that's what you go in for :)
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