Chapter Five: An Interesting Visit

Tugging nervously on his charcoal gray sweatshirt, Harry stared at Malfoy's door, fighting the instinct to run back to his dorm room and crawl into his trunk. This was so embarrassing. He took a deep breath, telling himself that he was a Gryffindor and he wasn't going to take the easy way out. Raising a fist he knocked quickly on the door, praying to himself that Malfoy wasn't there. After a moment, he heard the knob rattle, swiftly crushing those hopes. The door swung open slowly and he got a glimpse of Malfoy, looking nervous but determined with his wand gripped tightly in his hand, before Malfoy saw him and slid his calm mask back in place. It was all the proof Harry needed that Parkinson had been telling the truth.

"Potter?" Malfoy asked incredulous. "What are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?" he asked. Where had that come from? Harry had just planned to thank Malfoy politely and get out of there, not stay for a chat. Apparently his brain and his mouth were on different circuits.

"Yeah, sure, I guess," Malfoy replied, looking as startled as Harry felt. He backed up and let Harry past him before closing the door and locking it securely. Harry sat down awkwardly in a green armchair, feeling very out of place in all the green and silver décor. Malfoy, on the other hand, eyed him appraisingly. He thought the colors of the room set off Harry's eyes and hair very nicely.

"This room is amazing," Harry said, trying to break the ice. "I'd love to have a room like this all to myself."

"Yeah, it's nice," Malfoy said, noncommittally. "Not that I mind or anything, but why are you here, Potter?"

"I wanted to thank you. For what you did for me the other night."

"Oh, that. It was no problem. It's not like I could have just left you in that hallway." He caught a glimpse of Harry's expression and frowned. "Do you really believe that of me, Potter?" he asked softly.

"I don't know what I believe anymore!" Harry said, throwing his arms up helplessly. "You're so different from how you used to be—or at least how I thought you were."

Malfoy inclined his head slightly. "I completely understand where you're coming from. A lot of my perceptions have been changing recently as well. You're not as horribly proud and conceited as I thought you were, either."

"Why, thank you," Harry said dryly, but he smiled. "Since we were both so wrong about each other, what do you say to... getting to know each other a bit better?" A picture flashed through Harry's mind of just how much better he'd like to get to know Malfoy, but he pushed it aside. Now was not the time. Draco flashed him a ghost of a smile.

"Sure. Hello, I'm Draco Malfoy," he said, extending his hand to Harry. Catching on, Harry grinned back.

"Harry Potter," he said, clasping Malfoy's hand. He felt a strange moment of reluctance when Malfoy let go. "Nice to meet you. So," he said, wondering how to bring up this subject without letting on that Parkinson had told him a lot of it, "why exactly are you acting so differently this year?"

When Malfoy hesitated, Harry wasn't sure he was actually going to tall him, but then the blond made himself comfortable on the foot of his bed. "It's a long story," he said.

"I've got time," he told him, sitting down next to Draco. "I was planning on ignoring my homework tonight anyway." Malfoy's lips twitched. Was that almost a smile?

"All right then. I just... did some thinking awhile back. For the first time, I sorted out what I believe in from what my father believes in. Sure, I'm Pureblood, and proud of it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I think Muggleborn wizards should die. I don't even think that they're inferior to Pureblood wizards. The amount of skill and power you have doesn't have anything to do with your bloodline. Look at Granger; I may not really like the girl, but even I have to admit that she's good. And Filch, he's from a long line of very prestigious Pureblood wizards, and look how he turned out. So that was one major difference my father and I have." Malfoy said, putting up an index finger. "Then, he expected me to agree with the Pureblood tradition of arranged marriages, and there was no way in hell I was going to marry the arrogant bitch that he set me up with. Point number two." Malfoy put up another finger. "And finally, the major disagreement was about the Dark Lord. I was expected to accept the Dark Mark on my seventeenth birthday, pledge my allegiance to the Dark Lord, then climb the ranks until I was his favorite servant or something. Well, Malfoys are not servants," he announced defiantly. "And the Dark Lord's followers are more like slaves than servants, anyway. And I didn't particularly want to run around killing and striking fear in people's hearts and such. I want to live a quite life. Maybe succeed Professor Snape as the Potions teacher or study Potions on my own and develop new ones." Malfoy stopped, surprised at himself. The only person he'd ever told of his plans for the future so far had been Pansy. Why had he, the Master of Self-Control, just blabbed his most closely-guarded dreams to his former archenemy? "Anyway," he continued, trying to ignore the ranting of his ingrained habits for the slip. He held up a third finger. "That was strike three, so I was out."

Harry raised an eyebrow, wondering where Malfoy could have picked up the Muggle baseball terminology. "It sounds like you've had it rough. It couldn't have been easy to redefine yourself after so many years of being brainwashed to believe what your father wanted you to."

"No, it wasn't easy." Malfoy was silent for a moment, the look on his face introspective. After a brief, yet comfortable silence, Malfoy snapped out of his reverie and glanced at the intricate, gold wizard's watch on his wrist. "It's almost midnight Potter. You should probably go back pretty soon." He raised an elegant, blond eyebrow. "I trust you have your invisibility cloak with you."

Harry grinned. "Yeah. That reminds me—thanks for that, too. I'd forgotten all about the cloak until I found it where you put it. You didn't even try to take advantage of the situation."

I'd like to take advantage of the situation, all right, Draco thought to himself. But not in the way Potter meant. He was careful to make sure none of his thoughts showed on his face. "The knowledge was enough of an award in itself. I always have wondered how I got bombarded by snowballs by your disembodied head during third year. Now I know."

"Yeah," Harry said with a laugh. "You know my secret now. Well anyway, thanks." He stood up and Malfoy stood too, leaving only about a foot of space between them. Harry wondered why he felt short of breath all of a sudden.

Then, without any warning, Malfoy's room was rocked by an explosion that made the door bend in with a groan. In a flash, Harry, wand already in hand, had spun Malfoy and pinned him to the wall behind the door. He saw a flash of stark panic in Malfoy's silver eyes as the door bulged in again, splintering wood shrieking as it desperately tried to hold together.

"You've got good wards on that thing," he commented. Malfoy nodded mutely, but Harry saw that he'd recovered his wits enough to have his wand clenched in his left hand. Harry winced as one more blast made the door fly off its hinges and smash against the opposite wall. Five people in full Death Eater regalia, skull masks and all, swarmed into the room, shouting curses.

"Petrificus totalus!" Harry yelled, hitting the first Death Eater squarely in the chest. He wobbled for a moment, then fell flat on his face, tripping one of his comrades, who flailed around as he got tangled in his robes. Harry shook his head and froze him with Impedimenta. Concentrating on the people before him, he barely ducked a curse that sparkled with sickeningly familiar green light from one of the Death Eaters in the back.

"Stupefy!" Malfoy yelled from behind him, and the Death Eater crumpled. Harry caught a glimpse of rage twisting Malfoy's usually calm, handsome face, and had a glimmer of hope that the source of his rage was that Harry's life had been threatened. Though this whole situation could make anyone angry. Harry didn't recognize any of the curses that the Death Eaters were using, so he assumed that they were all Dark ones that he really didn't want to get hit by. He sidestepped another curse thrown his way, this one a violent orange, and Stupefied the caster.

The room fell deathly quiet; Malfoy must have already knocked out the last one. Where was Malfoy? Harry spun around and spotted him kneeling on the floor next to a fallen Death Eater. The Death Eater's mask had rolled off and Harry recognized the square-jawed face of Gregory Goyle.

"Malfoy?" he asked, but the blond didn't even look up. Harry felt a surge of panic, afraid that Malfoy had been hit by one of the many unknown Dark spells the Death Eaters had so casually tossed around. "Malfoy?" he repeated, kneeling on the forest-green carpet in front of the Slytherin. Now that he was closer, he saw that the blond was shaking. Harry reached out and cupped Malfoy's cold cheek in his warm palm. "Draco?" Harry murmured. The blond raised his head and Harry was struck by the broken, hollow look in his silver eyes.

"They were my friends," Draco whispered hoarsely.

"Oh, Draco," Harry said softly. Without thinking, Harry put his arms around the blond and pulled him close. Draco stiffened for a moment, then shocked them both by bursting into tears. Harry tightened his grip and whispered comforting nonsense while sobs wracked the smaller boy's body. "They weren't your friends, not really. If they had been, none of this would have happened."

"They would have died if they'd remained loyal to me," Draco said in a muffled voice. "Though now that they've failed to kill me they'll die anyway, either rotting in Azkaban or by the Dark Lord's hand." The Slytherin began to regain some of his composure just as Professor Snape dashed into view, robes askew, black eyes wide and greasy hair swinging as he slid to a stop in Draco's doorway. Harry had never seen Snape look so disarrayed. His alarmed gaze took in the five black-clad bodies on the floor, then froze as he caught sight of Harry and Draco. Seeing Harry in Draco's room after midnight seemed to disturb him more than the Death Eaters on the floor, even though by the time he'd noticed them Draco had stepped out of Harry's embrace and had placed himself an appropriate distance away from the other boy.

"What's going on here?" Snape demanded as his mind tried futilely to make sense of what, to him, was a completely nonsensical situation.

"Draco was attacked," Harry said simply, decided it was best to avoid the subject of why he was there for right now.

"Are they..." Snape began cautiously, gesturing to the still forms. Draco cast him a disgusted look.

"Of course we didn't kill them. They're Stupefied, or Petrified, or such." Snape nodded, then waved his wand to ensure that all five of them were securely bound, then went around collecting their wands.

"We should inform the Headmaster of tonight's events. All of us," he said, looking severely at Harry. Harry shrugged and followed them muttering, "Sure, like Dumbledore doesn't know already."

"Levicorpus,"Snape muttered, pointing his wand at one of the masked students. "What are you waiting for?" he demanded. "I do not feel secure leaving them here, and if you two do not assist me it will take all night to get them to the Headmaster." Harry and Draco each chose a body—Harry noticed that Draco had chosen Goyle. As the headed towards Dumbledore's office, he kept waiting for Draco to run him into a wall, or a statue, but Draco did nothing. He didn't seem to be completely with them, and Harry was a bit worried that he'd gone into shock. Snape stopped at Dumbledore's door and knocked sharply.

"Come in," they heard the Headmaster say from the other side. Harry thought he sounded tired. Snape opened the door and Harry saw that Dumbledore was seated in an armchair turned toward the window, gazing at the stars with Fawkes perched on his shoulder. After a moment, Dumbledore yanked his eyes from the starscape at glanced at his visitors. Clearly he wasn't expecting what he saw, because he looked momentarily startled before recovering his composure.

He took in the floating forms in front of them, and simply asked, "It happened, then?"

"Draco was attacked tonight, Albus," Snape announced, unceremoniously allowing his burden to fall to the floor. Harry and Draco followed suite in a slightly gentler manner. "There are two more. I will return shortly with them, if you wish to question these two," Snape said, his eyes finding Harry once more, clearly curious about what his part in tonight's events had been.

"Yes, thank you Severus," Dumbledore said. Snape disappeared with a swirl of his cloak, and Dumbledore's attention returned to the two boys. "Now then, Mr. Malfoy, would you care to tell me what happened?"

Draco opened his mouth, tried to speak, and then shook his head. Harry noticed that the other boy moved slightly closer to himself, as though seeking comfort. Harry reached out to him, and Draco stepped into his embrace, wrapping his arms around Harry's waist, and pressing his face into Harry's shoulder. Harry could feel him shivering, and he pulled the boy as tightly against his own body as he could.

"I can tell the story, Headmaster," Harry told him, noticing wryly that a bit of the twinkle had returned to Dumbledore's eyes.

"Yes, that would be fine, Harry."

Harry told the story in as much detail as he could remember—respectfully leaving out Draco's breakdown—from the time the door blew in to the moment they arrived in the Headmaster's office. Snape returned with the last two, bound together so he could lift them as one.

"And why was Potter involved in this quarrel?" the Potion master sneered, as the newest additions were dropped into the tangle of limbs on the floor.

Harry shrugged again. "I just happened to be there."

Draco spoke up for the first time. "I don't think I would have stood a chance if Harry hadn't been there," he said quietly. "I may be a better wizard than any of them, but five against one are unpleasant odds."

"And what was Mr. Potter doing in your room after curfew?" Dumbledore asked, raising a bushy white eyebrow.

"I wanted to thank him for helping me when I was sick the other day. We got to talking, and I guess we just lost track of the time," Harry explained.

"I see," Dumbledore commented. "Severus, if you would please unmask them?" The potion master did as he was bid.

"Mr. Goyle, Mr. Crabbe, Mr. Nott, Mr. Zabini, and Miss Bulstrode." He sighed and looked so very tired and sad. "I suppose I should call the Minister. No matter," he decided, turning back to the others. "I will take care of it once you all have left. No sense in dragging you into matters with the Ministry. Mr. Potter, if you would be so kind as to escort Mr. Malfoy back to his room?" Harry nodded and he and Draco left. Dumbledore stared after them for a long moment, a contemplative expression on his face until Snape cleared his throat.

"Would you like me to stay and help explain the matter to the Minister?"

"Yes, please," Dumbledore said with a tired smile. "A little help would be much appreciated."

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Hours later, the five Slytherins had been taken to Azkaban to await their trials. Dumbledore felt sick condemning five of his students to that terrible, godforsaken place, but he hadn't really had any other choice. Fawkes glided over and landed on his knee, pulling him out of his melancholy reverie.

"So, my dear, what do you think of our Misters Potter and Malfoy?"

"I think I'm going to win the bet. I told you so," Fawkes replied. Dumbledore could almost feel his smugness.

"You haven't won anything yet," Dumbledore cautioned him, but inwardly he very much hoped that Fawkes was correct.