Chapter 17: The First Time
Draco's skin was pale enough to hide most scars; already the one the hippogriff had given him was fading almost beyond recognition. If you looked closely, however, a thin line spanned nearly the entire length of his left arm. If you looked closer, a jagged scar slashed across the first, so faded as to be nearly invisible to any casual observer.
To Draco, both scars were suddenly not only starkly visible, but impossible to ignore. In the weeks that had passed since Hermione told him about Buckbeak, they'd drawn his eye irresistibly. Worse, they hurt. Worst of all, the events that had caused them tormented him endlessly. He hadn't thought about the wretched Muggle family in that car in years, and now he couldn't shut his eyes without hearing the crunch of metal and crash of breaking glass, the screams from people whose faces he'd never properly looked at. He could feel the tree branch tearing into his arm as he fled the scene of an accident which must've altered the course of those Muggles' lives forever, while he himself walked around with nothing more than a scar no one else had ever noticed.
Wasn't that how it always went?
When he was eleven, those Muggles had suffered for whatever paltry grain of power Draco had enjoyed from ordering Vince and Greg around.
Last year, Ginny had suffered because Draco's father couldn't trust him with family secrets.
Now, some innocent hippogriff had to die because...because whatever dark, insidious seed that spectral woman had planted inside him on the train had hissed something ghastly in his ear, and he'd listened. And whatever she'd done to him, it hadn't gone away. That hiss was in his ear constantly, sometimes loud enough to drown out his own thoughts, sometimes so quiet he could scarcely make it out, but always there. Sometimes it paralyzed him with that deep, raw ache that left him excruciatingly numb. Other times, it assumed his father's voice and manner and reminded him that he was, in fact, useless at everything. Now, it wouldn't let him forget that he'd inflicted pain on others all his life, and that he deserved far more than these wretched scars on his arm.
But he didn't want to inflict pain any longer. He didn't recognize the person Hermione had described that night on the grounds, but oh, he wanted to. Helping Sirius repair the damage of the last twelve years felt like the first step toward finding him.
This was at the forefront of his thoughts as he stood in the Quidditch locker room, transfixed by the scars on his arm in the mirror. Perhaps, by morning, they would begin to fade.
"Oy!" Lucy. "It doesn't matter how your hair looks as long as you catch the Snitch, now get a move on!" Draco didn't take his eyes off his own reflection as he pulled on the last bit of his Quidditch robes, hiding his arm beneath the green fabric. He opened the door and Lucy took a slight step back, evidently startled. Looking him over, she frowned.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah." He was. Or, at least, in twenty-four hours, he would be. "Let's go."
Two weeks ago, Gryffindor had flattened Hufflepuff in a match that unambiguously earned them the right to walk out onto the field opposite Slytherin this afternoon. Draco was vaguely aware of the roar of sound that erupted from the stands as they took off, but he couldn't properly see the stands themselves. His teammates' faces were blurred as though he were looking at them through a misted window, and once he was in the air, everything beyond the end of his broom was an enormous wall of haze. Everything, that was, except Harry Potter, for all Draco had to do was keep Potter away from the Snitch until Gryffindor was at least fifty points up. What he'd do if the Gryffindor Chasers weren't up to their usual standards...well, he didn't have a plan for that. He'd resigned himself to simply hoping he didn't need one.
Fortunately, within seconds Angelina Johnson scored the first goal of the match. Cheers erupted from the stands below, but moments later they were cut short by a sickening thud and a shriek; judging by Lee Jordan's howls of disapproval, someone on the Slytherin team had chosen an unorthodox way of expressing their disappointment with Gryffindor's goal. Above Draco, Potter flitted abruptly upward. Draco stood stunned for a half-second-the Firebolt was nearly twice the top speed of his Nimbus. He didn't have a chance in hell of catching up, and if Potter had seen the Snitch and was stupid enough to catch it now…
"That will do!" roared Madam Hooch below. "Penalty shot to Gryffindor for an unprovoked attack on their Chaser! Penalty shot to Slytherin for deliberate damage to their Chaser!"
To Draco's enormous relief, Potter turned sharply to watch as Alicia Spinnett took Gryffindor's penalty. Off to the left, Flint and Lucy appeared to be having a heated argument, probably over the fountain of blood gushing from Flint's nose. At Madam Hooch's whistle, he shot upward to take Slytherin's penalty. Draco could tell, even from nearly fifty feet away, that Lucy was rolling her eyes. Predictably, Flint missed, bringing the score to twenty-zero to Gryffindor.
Draco turned away. Ten feet above, Potter was scanning the air around him with a look of immense concentration. If he'd seen the Snitch before, it had certainly vanished.
The next twenty minutes were a flurry of movements and shouts from below, punctuated by the occasional sickening crunch as Bludgers made their mark, Lee Jordan's increasingly ridiculous commentary, and then Madam Hooch's whistle split the air and Katie Bell swooped forward to take another penalty shot. If Slytherin's chasers didn't learn to check themselves, thought Draco, this match would go much more quickly than he'd thought.
Thirty-zero to Gryffindor, and Draco had only just turned away from the goalposts when it happened. Potter had shot off down the field, and his pin-straight trajectory could only mean one thing, but what on earth was he playing at? If he caught the Snitch now, Gryffindor would win the match, but Slytherin would win the Cup. His split-second head start and vastly superior broom destroyed any chance Draco might've had to catch up, so instead he looped around in the opposite direction, dodging a Bludger aimed at him by one of the Weasley twins, and he'd scarcely caught up to Potter when Madam Hooch's whistle rang out once again below. This time, she awarded both teams penalties and hadn't finished yelling by the time the game started up again. Draco didn't think he'd ever played in such a violent game in his life, and it appeared to be getting dirtier and dirtier by a second. Enraged at Gryffindor's early lead, Flint and Montague seemed to be using any means necessary to take possession of the Quaffle.
Both penalties made their mark. Forty-ten to Gryffindor, and a glint of gold caught Draco's eye hovering twenty feet above him. He cast about for Potter, their eyes locked, and though Draco was sure he was ready, he'd underestimated both the speed of the Firebolt and the skill of its rider. Potter dodged Draco's attempt to block him with frankly upsetting ease, and then he was ten feet from the Snitch, five, two-
Draco had to do something. Desperation roared within him and he threw himself forward, much further than he'd ordinarily have dared. His stomach lurched and time suspended as he felt, viscerally, how very far he was from the ground. As much to keep himself from falling as anything else, he seized the end of Potter's broomstick and yanked.
Potter whirled around at once, horrified at first, and then his face contorted with such intense fury that Draco wondered whether it might not be safer to allow himself to plummet to the ground.
"Fuck off, Malfoy!" he screamed, jerking his broom violently in an attempt to shake Draco off.
How Draco managed to catch himself back on his broom was a mystery. His heart was still pounding and his head was still spinning when Madam Hooch's whistle split the air.
"I've never seen such tactics!" she roared. "Penalty! Penalty to Gryffindor!"
"YOU CHEATING SCUM!" bellowed Lee Jordan from the commentary booth. "YOU FILTHY, CHEATING BASTARD!" Jordan was wedging himself comically into the corner to avoid Professor McGonagall-though Draco thought he needn't have worried. Professor McGonagall, for once, looked more displeased with the events on the field than Jordan's description of them. Oddly, it was seeing her white, tight-lipped face and shaking hands that made him aware of exactly how badly he'd fouled the other Seeker.
Katie Bell's hands trembled with anger as she lobbed a wildly mis-aimed penalty shot in the general direction of the Slytherin goal, though it went nowhere near the hoops. Potter had shot off to the other side of the field, furious that the Snitch had disappeared again. The game resumed below, but Draco's egregious foul seemed to have broken something in the Gryffindor team. Where before they'd been a precise, almost mechanical unit, now they soared off in all directions, tossing the Quaffle with reckless abandon and seemingly unable to anticipate or even pay much attention to what the others were doing. Slytherin, meanwhile, had turned positively bloodthirsty. Within the next twenty minutes they'd got two goals past Wood, though Gryffindor had been awarded another penalty shot-for what, Draco didn't care to see. Forty-thirty to Gryffindor, and Draco was beginning to fear his plan had backfired too completely to salvage. He scanned the field rigorously for the Snitch-Potter mustn't be allowed anywhere near it, not now-and he'd only just spotted it again when a horrible crunch sounded from frighteningly close behind him, followed by a strangled yell and a whoop from the commentary box.
"That's how it's done! You'll need to get up earlier than that to beat a Firebolt, boys!" Draco risked a glance downward, and saw Warrington and Montague fighting to remain on their brooms, both bleeding profusely and growling at one another. Something collided with his shoulder then, so hard he nearly fell to the ground himself, and then Potter had shot past him and was streaking up the field in hot pursuit of the Snitch. Draco flung himself directly into his path, forcing him to pull into an extremely fast and risky dive in order to avoid a head-on collision. He swore as the Snitch vanished again, and then an almighty shriek from somewhere below mingled with the now-familiar sound of Madam Hooch's whistle. Evidently furious with their thwarted attempt to aim both Bludgers at Potter, Warrington and Montague had taken an opportunity to hit them instead at Wood. They both made their mark, and although he stayed on his broom, he looked completely winded.
"YOU DO NOT ATTACK THE KEEPER UNLESS THE QUAFFLE IS WITHIN THE SCORING AREA!" bellowed Madam Hooch, beside herself. "Two penalties to Gryffindor!" Alicia Spinnett took both penalties and scored, and within minutes, Angelina Johnson had scored again. Seventy-thirty to Gryffindor, and a flash of gold caught Draco's eye, ten feet above to his left. He could feel Potter close behind him, and, hoping against hope that he hadn't seen the Snitch, dove to his right. Potter swooped down expertly to block him, but as Draco pulled sharply out of his dive to avoid a collision, his eyes flitted upward of their own accord, drawn irresistibly to that glint of gold. Potter's eyes followed his, and then he frowned deeply at Draco for what must only have been a split second, but time had suspended between them and their eyes locked for what felt like an eternity. Potter opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment, Gryffindor scored again. Eighty-thirty to Gryffindor. Draco didn't move. For a moment, neither did Potter. And then, abruptly, he wrenched his eyes away from Draco's and shot up to grab the Snitch smoothly out of the air.
The Gryffindor team plummeted to the ground, arms tangled chaotically around one another, cheering and sobbing and laughing and holding the Cup aloft triumphantly to their roaring fans. They'd won.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!"
Hermione was jerked awake so suddenly it felt like being plunged into a vat of icy water. She sat bolt upright, and she could tell even before she threw aside her bed hangings that Parvati and Lavender were just as frightened as she.
"Did you hear that?"
"What's going on?"
"Turn on the light!" cried Hermione, and a moment later, Lavender's panic-stricken face sprang into view.
"D'you think they're still carrying on downstairs?" said Parvati fretfully, pressing her ear cautiously against the wall separating their dormitory from the boys'.
"I don't know who screamed, Parvati," said Lavender grimly, "but I don't think they were having any fun."
Hermione had to agree. She'd abandoned the post-match party quite early for a frustrating and ultimately fruitless attempt to make a dent in her mountain of homework. The ghastly racket downstairs had carried on until, unless she was much mistaken, Professor McGonagall had burst into the common room to put an end to it. That was hours ago, and Gryffindor Tower had been quiet ever since.
"Let's go and see," she said tensely, pushing open the door and leading the way downstairs and into the common room. Ron was shouting about something as Harry fought to calm him. Dean, Seamus, and Neville were all looking very serious.
"Who screamed?" said Ginny's voice behind her, and Hermione jumped. More people were coming down the stairs now, rubbing their eyes and looking extremely confused.
"What's going on?"
"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"
"Oh, excellent!" exclaimed Fred Weasley, appearing in the doorway and grinning broadly. "Are we carrying on?"
"Everyone, back upstairs, now!" A hush fell over the room. Percy had arrived, looking extremely disgruntled. His Head Boy badge was pinned to his pajamas, and Hermione wondered idly whether he slept like that, or whether he'd pinned it on hastily in preparation to tell them all off.
"Percy-Sirius Black!" yelled Ron, and a great gasp ran through the common room. "In our dormitory! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!" There was a very tense moment.
"Nonsense!" snapped Percy. "You had too much to eat, Ron-had a nightmare-"
But Hermione didn't think so. Ron's eyes were double their normal size, and Harry was white as a sheet. Whatever had happened in that dormitory, it wasn't a nightmare.
"Now, really, that's enough!" Professor McGonagall slammed the portrait closed behind her and glowered around at them all. "I am delighted that Gryffindor won, but this is ridiculous! It is half-past three o'clock in the morning! Percy, I expected better of you!"
"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor!" said Percy at once. "I was just telling them all to get back to bed! My brother Ron here had a nightmare-"
"It wasn't a nightmare!" shouted Ron, stamping his foot in frustration. "Professor, I woke up, and Sirius Black was standing over me, holding a knife!"
Professor McGonagall pursed her lips.
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley. How could he possibly get through the portrait hole?"
"Ask him!" cried Ron, jabbing a finger at the back of Sir Cadogan's portrait. Professor McGonagall appraised him sternly for a moment, then pushed open the portrait hole and stepped back outside.
"Sir Cadogan, did you allow a man to enter Gryffindor Tower tonight?" she asked, pursing her lips and folding her arms sternly.
"Certainly, good lady!" cried Sir Cadogan, with a ridiculous bow that nearly overbalanced him. There was a moment of stunned silence, both inside and out of the common room.
"You-did?" exclaimed Professor McGonagall. "But-the password!"
"He had 'em!" said Sir Cadogan proudly. "Had the whole week's, my lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!" Professor McGonagall climbed back into the portrait hole, now white as a ghost, and stared around at them for what felt like a year.
"Which person," she said finally, voice so stiff it nearly crackled, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"
Everyone knew, but no one dared say anything. Finally, Neville raised a chalk-white, trembling hand into the air.
No one in Gryffindor Tower went back to bed that night. They knew the castle was being searched again, and just as before, theories flew through the air at lightning speed. This time, however, there was more urgency about them. Ron had a crowd around him the whole night, wanting to know, in excruciating detail, precisely what had happened. He seemed to relish the attention, and Harry retreated into the corner to sit next to Hermione. There was a very serious look on his face, and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but seemed to think better of it at once and shook his head sharply. Hermione frowned.
"What?" she asked.
"It's nothing," said Harry firmly, as if just now making that decision himself. Hermione nodded and glanced out the window. She wanted to ask how Harry thought Sirius Black had gotten in, but they hadn't discussed the subject at all since their visit to Hagrid's. She was wracking her brains for something else to say when Ginny threw herself into the chair next to them.
"Ron just told Lavender Brown that Sirius Black ran away after he smacked him in the face," she said flatly. Hermione made a valiant, but ultimately failed, effort to stifle her snort of laughter. Harry shrugged, but a smile was fighting its way onto his face.
"Well, he's always been good in a crisis," he said lightly. Ginny laughed, then grew more serious.
"How's he getting in, though?" she asked. "I know Sir Cadogan let him into Gryffindor Tower, but how'd he get into the castle in the first place?" Harry thought for a moment, but by the time he spoke, Hermione was no longer listening. Something had struck her like a physical blow around the head, something Ginny had the last time they pondered this question.
...I do think he probably got into the castle the same way he got out of Azkaban. They're both supposed to be impossible to break into or out of, and they're both being guarded by dementors.
Hermione couldn't explain it, but the answer felt like something hovering on the tip of her tongue, perfectly within her grasp but infuriatingly impossible to see. She knew there were ways of fighting off dementors, but somehow, she didn't think Black would be using any orthodox method to subdue them. If he were, surely he would have been caught by now, so it had to be something else. Tomorrow, she decided, she wouldn't leave the library until she'd learned all there was to know about dementors.
Rumors of the events in Gryffindor Tower flooded the castle the following morning along with the daylight. Ron Weasley was being lauded as a hero for some unclear reason, and could be heard spouting a thrilling story at the Gryffindor table that had nearly doubled in length since the start of breakfast and couldn't possibly be true. But it didn't matter whether it was true, did it? What mattered was what it meant. Somehow, once again, Sirius had been forced to flee the castle without getting hold of the rat.
"You should really eat something." Pansy's light touch on his wrist felt like a slap.
"I'm not hungry." He wasn't. In fact, he'd be sick if he looked at the food strewn about the table for another second. He stood and swept from the Hall, knowing at once that his friends were talking about him. Let them. He hurried up the stairs to the third floor. Locating the statue Potter had inadvertently shown him, he pulled out his wand.
"Dissendium!"
The hump on the statue's back fell away to reveal a dark hole, small but wide enough to allow a person to slip through. With a glance over his shoulder, Draco climbed up and immediately fell a considerable distance down what felt like a stone slide. Pitch darkness swallowed him at once, so complete that he couldn't see his own hands at his sides.
"Lumos!" he cried, and his wandlight flooded the slide just in time to catch himself before he stumbled to the ground at the bottom. Heart hammering unpleasantly in his chest, he cast his old familiar Disillusionment Charm lest he meet anyone on the way into Hogsmeade, took a few deep breaths to get his bearings, and set off down the passageway.
It took ages. Years. Bloody millennia. He walked for so long that he was sure he'd die of old age before he reached the wretched village, and the passage only became narrower and more uneven as he went. There had to be a less infuriating way to get into Hogsmeade, he thought crossly as he stumbled over a rogue tree root for the third time, and then the passage began to slope upward. Heart leaping at the promise of an end to this hideous journey, Draco sped up. Before long he found himself at the foot of a stone staircase, leading to a trapdoor. Reaching this, he pressed his ear against it in the hopes of gleaning some clue as to where he was. Hearing nothing, he shrugged and pried it open slowly until he could slip through.
He was standing in a cellar lined with boxes and crates of every kind of sweet imaginable-he must be in Honeydukes, he thought, and sure enough, the rickety wooden staircase at the other end led up into the sweetshop. Even lacking its usual crowd of Hogwarts students, the tiny shop was packed and Draco was forced to wedge himself painfully into awkward corners or behind displays to avoid children running into him. Finally, he slipped out the door after a harried-looking woman and her ghastly eight-year-old son, casually snatching a toffee from the latter's fist as he went. He tossed it into a bin less than a minute later; the thought of eating it made him feel ill.
It didn't occur to him until he pushed aside the now-familiar branches leading to the clearing that he might not find Sirius there, but to his enormous relief, a large black dog whipped its head up and barked the instant he'd parted the bushes. He let fall his Disillusionment Charm, and Sirius appeared in front of him, looking slightly alarmed.
"That really is a bloody good Disillusionment Charm," he snapped. "Announce yourself, will you? I thought you were…" he didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't need to.
"I'm sorry," said Draco quietly. Sirius gave him a look that communicated, quite clearly, that he knew Draco wasn't talking about his abrupt appearance in the clearing this morning.
"It isn't your fault." He looked, suddenly, much older than usual. "You did everything you could. More, even." Draco stared at the ground for a few moments, trying to work out how to phrase his next question.
"What's going to happen?" he said finally. "I mean, if...well, if the rat gets away…" That wasn't right at all, but judging by the darkening behind Sirius's eyes, he understood.
"You're asking what it was like the first time?" he said huskily. Draco swallowed hard and nodded. Sirius considered for a moment.
"It was dreadful," he said flatly. "I don't know whether I can explain...when Voldemort was at the height of his power, no one knew who they could trust. It was impossible to tell who was working for him and who wasn't...and even if you did trust someone, well...he had ways to control people. Ways of making them do horrible things without being able to stop themselves. He could make a mother kill her own child, if he wanted, and there wouldn't be a thing she could do to stop it. Hardly anyone dared fight against him, and the ones who did...well, nobody lived once he decided to kill them. Every day, news came in of more deaths, more torturing, more disappearances, it never stopped, we never knew who was going to be next. We were scared. For ten years, we were scared stiff for ourselves, our friends, our families. The Ministry was in complete chaos, trying to keep everything hidden from Muggles, but meanwhile Muggles were dying too...one of my closest friends was Muggle-born, and toward the end, when she was afraid she wouldn't survive…" Sirius broke off, and it felt as if he'd plunged a dagger into Draco's stomach with his last words.
"What?" he gasped. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he needed to get the blade out.
"She Obliviated them," whispered Sirius. "Her parents. Sent them off to America with no idea who they were, hoping she'd live to put them right when the war was over." Why could he feel, actually physically feel, blood gushing from the imaginary wound Sirius had opened inside him?
"Did she?" He couldn't manage more than a hoarse whisper. Sirius shook his head.
"They're probably still in America." He was quiet for what felt like an eternity. "Fear makes people do mad things, Draco, and in those days, it was all we had to go on. If he ever gets strong enough to come back…" Draco swallowed the lump in his throat with enormous difficulty.
"If the rat gets away," he forced out, "is that what you think will happen?" Sirius's face went cold and stony.
"The rat...wouldn't search for him unless the signs were there," he breathed. "It would be out of the question to go back to his old master without some guarantee he'd be protected."
"That's not what I asked." Draco's tone reminded him unpleasantly of that eight-year-old who had so annoyed him in Honeydukes what felt like a lifetime ago-a bit shrill, full of excruciating desperation. "I asked whether you thought it was going to happen." Sirius studied him for a long time, and slowly, his eyes softened as though Draco were, in fact, a very young child.
"I'm sorry," he said heavily. "I shouldn't have told you." He paused. "You're a good kid, Draco."
Whether intentionally or not, Sirius had answered Draco's question.
Hours later, lying awake and staring up at the darkened ceiling of his dormitory, the scars on his arm burning him worse than ever, he realized he'd been wrong. All year he'd blamed the dementors and the woman on the train for making him antagonize that hippogriff, for the relentless whisper of his own worthlessness that echoed inexorably through the back of his mind, the excruciating awareness that he'd never be good, no matter what Sirius said and no matter how hard he tried...the wretched ache that grew so strong at times that it pinned him to his bed, no matter how hard he struggled against it. He'd been wrong. It wasn't the woman on the train, he'd always been this way.
Hadn't he spent the summer battling through a haze of throbbing numbness, scarcely able to eat, sometimes unable to sleep and sometimes unable to wake up? Desperately craving his friends' voices, their faces, but paralyzed by the knowledge that they wouldn't be his friends if they knew what his family was capable of?
Hadn't he learned, well before the age of eleven, to desensitize himself against the raw sensation that tugged at the back of his throat when his parents spoke to him, even if it sometimes meant he'd lie awake at night, powerless to stop their words echoing through his mind and slashing his insides like a hundred tiny but lethal knives?
Hadn't he snarled at Dobby to stay away on the afternoon of the car crash, half wanting to avoid blame for what had happened, half knowing the Elf shouldn't heal the cuts because he deserved them?
The woman on the train hadn't done this to him. She was a part of him. A part of him which, thanks to the dementors, now roared more freely inside than ever before, so powerful that he wasn't sure he'd be able to fight her off, so dreadfully comforting that he wasn't sure he wanted to.