Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am however the owner of a new refrigerator, also for my dorm room.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For those of you who know how to count and caught the fact that I said "two more chapters 'til Bill finds out" twice in two separate chapters, yes, I miscounted, and forgot to explain to you all that it would be more. But, you can be assured that in the NEXT chapter, Bill will find out Draco's secret.
Silfion: I'm glad that you like my portrayal of Bill. I've always liked him because there is so much not said about him. Thanks for dropping the review!
DD: Nice catch, the runes/ruins. When I wrote the first chapter I was always making that mistake and I'm glad that you caught that one. Thanks for reviewing.
Gremlin: I explained a bit about Bill's spying activities in chapter four, the second part, but more will be discussed in future chapters. Thank you for your review.
Slytherin Smirk: Thank you!
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Chapter Seven
Rule #6: Never take action directly. Wait and see how things play out before making your move.
"Right here you can see the main difference between the two dialects," said Bill, circling the two runes with the chalk and stepping back from the board so that the students could see. "It's not a language difference though. Can anyone tell me what it is?"
Draco resisted the urge to groan as the bushy-haired girl next to him shot her hand up. As hers was the only hand raised, Bill called on her.
It was mid-November now, and Draco still couldn't make heads or tails out of the code Bill had out on the board and he knew that he wasn't being paranoid, because counting the instructions today, the anomalies had been present a total of seven times.
"It's not a language difference," said Hermione clearly, "it's a writing difference. As the Romans were used to a different form of writing from the hieroglyphics used by the ancient Egyptians, when they attempted to copy the glyphs they tended to make them more uniform and much simpler than the originals. Because of this difference they were thought of as two different dialects until 1935. Although both say the same thing, many agree that in the latter version much of the artistry has been lost in translation."
"Very good," said Bill, impressed. "Five points to Gryffindor. Now if you look hereā¦"
Draco didn't look; he was staring at the code he had copied down on his parchment. He had learned two things.
One: the appearance of the code corresponded directly with Snape being called by Voldemort. He knew because the day after Snape wouldn't be in class, or if he was, he looked particularly strained. Those were the days that Snape lashed out at the Gryffindors and the days that Snape's gaze would rest on him more frequently, but Draco had no clue what he was thinking.
Two: Bill was contacting someone in the class. It had to be because Bill always erased the boards thoroughly and the chalkboards at Hogwarts were resistance to charms that would re-write what had been written last on them.
Draco was a genius, and quickly figured that he must be contacting the sixth year Ravenclaw girl who had been home-schooled. At first he thought it was Granger, but after careful observation realized that she was completely oblivious to the code. He then figured that as no self-respecting Order member would endanger the life of a child, the girl must be under poly-juice, or must be his estranged cousin Tonks.
He bet on the latter as he couldn't see any flask of Poly-juice concealed on the girl, Amanda Michaels, and after checking the Ministry records he found that Tonks was on leave of absence from the Ministry.
"Please write this down," said Bill, now picking up the chalk again and beginning to write on the board.
Draco looked at his parchment and realized that it was completely full of mindless scribbles. He bent down to get a new piece from his bag and winced as he felt his wrenched shoulder stretch too far.
Warrington, the Slytherin Quidditch Captain, had forced practice after practice on his team preparing for the Gryffindor-Slytherin match this Saturday. He was particularly demanding of Draco, keeping him out an hour or two past the usual practices, grilling him on such moves as the Wronski feint (which is how he slammed his shoulder), or making him pull barrel roll after front-end-flip until Draco couldn't tell which direction was up or down.
Warrington didn't like Draco, even though the seventh year didn't remember the incident with Blaise, and he took pleasure out of tormenting the Prince of Slytherin. Warrington couldn't get rid of Draco, though he had the power to. Draco was the next best flyer in the school, second only to Potter, and although Potter continually beat Draco to the Snitch, Draco in turn beat everyone else. So Warrington settled for making Draco's life miserable, and Draco was starting to dread practices.
"This is important," said Bill. "It will be on the test."
Draco wrote it down, even though it wasn't necessary. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy Quidditch; he actually loved it. He even loved the fact that he wasn't the best. This was something that he needed to work at, and practice constantly. He loved the competition and the strain of trying to get on top. It was challenging, and he didn't get challenging very often, not even in his school work. It was just that it took so much bloody time, time that could be spent figuring out that damned code.
He had done everything he could think of to break it, from math based codes, to searching through the green book Bill had given him for a clue. He had found nothing.
"Alright," said Bill. "That's it. Au revoir. Je vous verrai tout au jeu samedi."
Draco jerked his head up at the bit of French, knowing instantly what it meant. Goodbye. I will see you all at the game on Saturday. Draco spoke French fluently, as he was born in Paris and raised along the French Riviera. He learned English at six, and finally moving to England at the age of eight with his parents where he perfected his second language. So why was Bill speaking French?
The other students stared as well and Bill gave a laugh. "I'm learning French so I can surprise my girlfriend. She's coming to visit me over Christmas break."
The girls 'awww'ed and the boys cat called, and Draco shook his head, pulling out the green book to return to the teacher. His accent was terrible.
"Here's your book," said Draco, approaching him once the class had filtered out. He glanced once more at the instructions on the board, and suddenly it hit him. He stared. It couldn't be that simple, could it? He knew it could, sometimes the most difficult things were incredibly easy, but why hadn't he seen it? He knew why. Bill was British and so Draco had expected the code to be put into English, not French. His gaze swept over the announcement, pulling out the anomalies and translating them as he went.
"Thanks," said Bill, taking the book from his outstretched hand, then waving a hand in front of Draco's eyes. "Hey, Draco?"
Draco started, pulling his eyes away from the board and onto Bill's face. He hadn't been able to translate much, but what he had seen did not look innocent at all.
He glanced back at the board, Bill following his line of vision. Draco mentally swore and schooled his face into one of disinterest. He saw Bill pale and whip back to Draco, but by then his expression had changed to one of normalcy and Bill stared for a moment.
"You alright, Draco? You were staring off for a moment," said Bill, his eyes searching Draco's face for any sign that he had seen something.
"Yeah, I'm fine," said Draco. "I just zoned out for a moment; I'm kind of tired."
"Better get some rest then," said Bill easily. "You have a big game in two days so don't study too hard."
"Never," said Draco, shouldering his bag.
"Well, good-bye Draco."
"Au revoir," said Draco, watching Bill, but not seeing any indication that the French meant something. He was a good actor, but Draco was a genius and had grown up with parents whose entire life outside of the house was one big act. Bill was up to some thing, and he was going to find out what it was.
He went straight back to his dorm, grabbing all of the codes he had copied down, and jumping onto his neatly made bed. He pulled the hangings closed and spread out all of the announcements he had copied down. He could see the code now. He took the first letter of every adjective that was out of place and wrote it down. Then he read the message backwards.
In short, Bill's code was ingenious. The sentences that formed out of the first letters of the misplaced adjectives were in French so that someone who did notice something weird about the adjectives wouldn't notice any familiar letter combinations and finally the message was backwards, so that the few letter combinations that were similar in French and English wouldn't be noticeable.
Draco quickly worked through the translations starting at the first ones and working his way up until the most recent ones. He read them quickly, his mind trying to grasp at what he read.
R suspects S but no proof. Spy in Hogwarts.
Attack at Ministry possible. No more info.
Attack called off in favor for something else, meet at usual time, place.
M suspects S, no proof though M might get some. Watch out for spy.
MacNair killed. S in the clear for now.
R not revealing any plans at meeting, still suspects spy.
Keep on lookout. Something big happening within a week. Must meet.
Draco thought for a moment. R was used for Riddle, aka Voldemort. Smart really. V for Voldemort might be a little obvious. S was obvious Severus Snape. Draco had long doubted his Head of House's loyalty to the Dark Lord. Somehow he had the feeling that Dumbledore would be a lot harder to fool than the Dark Lord, and he figured that the old man would know if Snape turned back to his old ways.
M was for Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy. It made since that Lucius suspected Snape, because Lucius had a sixth sense about things. He was also manipulative so if suspecting Severus helped him in anyway, he would have no qualms about turning in his 'friend'.
It would also explain the odd looks that Snape sent his way when he thought Draco wasn't looking. They had an odd relationship. Snape was supposed to be protective and immensely proud of his star Slytherin and Draco was supposed to look up to Severus as one of Lucius' friends. In reality, Snape didn't really care for him, but let him get away with whatever he pleased, and Draco left Snape alone. It was a mutual, beneficial relationship.
But what to do about Bill? As much as Draco hated to admit it, he liked the Professor. He was smart, a good teacher, and he wasn't prejudiced against Draco and he called him by his first name, something that even Snape only did on occasion. He would just keep his mouth shut until he knew the full details; he was too Slytherin just to let the matter lie. He would keep an eye on Bill.
Rule number six: Never take action directly. Wait and see how things play out before making your move.
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Bill watched Draco leave, his heart pounding madly in his chest. There was no way Draco could know. He couldn't suspect, could he? The code was not particularly hard, but it was completely hidden. There was no way he could decipher it; there was no way he could even figure out that it was there.
Get a grip Weasley, he told himself sternly. He's just a sixteen year old kid; he's not even getting O's in your class. Yeah, he may not be a total prat like everyone thinks he is, but that does not make him a genius. He's just a kid, just a kid.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling his heart return to a normal pace. After erasing the board thoroughly, he packed up his teaching supplies and left the room, making his way slowly to the teacher's lounge. The walk helped clear his head, and he sat down at his desk and began to grade his NEWT class' tests.
He took a break for dinner, and couldn't keep his eyes from straying to the blond Slytherin at the end table. From what he could tell, Draco didn't look as if he had just figured out that Bill was spying on the Death Eater meetings, but then again, the kid was a hard book to read.
He did notice the food being pushed around the plate, and the wind-blown hair. He resisted the urge to smile; the Slytherins were obviously pulling extra-practices to try and beat the Gryffindors. He was looking forward to seeing Harry play because McGonagall assured him that it was better than watching Charlie.
He returned back to his desk in a better mood and noticed the velvet green book on his desk where he had absent mindedly placed it. He smiled as he recalled memories of writing in the book while on a dig and began flipping through it, reading tidbits here and there. His eye caught a dark spot and he looked at it more closely.
Someone had crossed out a word in a straight, dark line. He realized that he had used the wrong verb, and there, over his error, was the correct word, written in elegant script. It was Draco's handwriting; he knew it in an instant. No one else wrote in such calligraphy.
He let the full implications of the correction hit him. This was the Syrian dialect, the hardest ever translated, and Draco had noticed his mistake, and fixed it. But how did he know the dialect? Thoughts of Draco as a kid genius raced across his mind. It would account for the correction in the book, but that would mean that Draco really did see something in the instructions on the board.
There was one way to find out. Bill looked at the student files on a corner of his desk. All it would take is one look at his file, and then he could put these ridiculous notions of Draco as some hidden genius to rest. He reached for the folder, but just then McGonagall raced into the room.
"Bill, some fourth year Slytherins locked a group of third years in a closet. I could use your expertise seeing as it is a private closet with heavier locking charms."
"'Course," said Bill, grabbing his wand and heading out. "It will be just like opening Ramses' tomb for the first time."
"I doubt it will be that difficult," said McGonagall. "But in the case of some protective jinxes it will be best for you to open it up since you have the most experience in the matter."
Bill nodded and exited the room, his mind completely on the task at hand and forgetting about the folder that lay in the middle of the sixth year pile with the truth about the blond Slytherin.
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One more chapter until Bill discovers the truth! If you are excited, or if your curiosity is peaked, or even if you are just mildly interested, leave a review.
