N/A: This fanfic is SPOILER-FREE, following the storyline up to HBP, planned before the publication of Deathly Hallows and will remain so until further notice. Couldn't be more unlike the real book, really.
Special and very much thanks to QianYun: you are the dream reviewer, and I've found all your comments very helpful - much as I intended most fragments to be vague, I might have gone overboard with that. Special thanks, too, to gryffindor gin from the LJ hp-rpg for co-working with me in some of the following scenes.
Psycho.
Chapter Two: Puzzle & Piece.
Today a new family just knocked on the doors of the castle asking the Headmistress to let them hide here. It was all disorienting new to Harry; stumbling onto staff of Hogwarts school and have them greet him like old mates. From what Hagrid reckoned, even the creatures of the forest had fled. It sounded deserted, and the trees were dying, dementors were scattered everywhere.
A bit late at midday, late August, Harry was on his way to the Headmistress' office, as he was summoned to on matters he ignored but suspected as much as them being Order business. Pass the gargoyle and the staircase and at the door; he knocked and waited.
"Yes, please come in," came McGonagall's voice muffled behind the door. He turned the knob. The scene that greeted Harry's eyes was something that only reflected his latest dreams.
--
He should have seen it. She waited for owls eagerly! At some point, Draco had hoped he was waiting a letter from Father. Late night talks with Professor Snape were often. But Draco had not suspected, not this.
With every word coming Mother's mouth, Draco felt his pride shattered, his face burn with shame and with pity for her, and with fear now standing before the enemy, McGonagall, the current Headmistress of Hogwarts. Time and time again he had said the position would soon be his Lord's.
But it was the top of the iceberg now to be confronted the one and only, the famous Harry Potter.
"We have been expecting you," said McGonagall. Harry was lost, looking for one to the other. McGonagall hadn't acknowledged that he had withdrawn his wand. "Please, Potter, sit down."
A few moments of hesitation summoned McGonagall's attention back to Harry, "If you wouldn't mind, professor, I prefer to be standing."
He moved two slow steps rounding the group and didn't lower his wand. Draco sneered a proud, hateful kind of expression, but his mother was grimacing, offended. Cagily, Harry didn't take his eyes of the two.
"Well, Potter, do as you might," Headmistress McGonagall had said, sitting down at the big desk chair that once had been Dumbledore's. "I'll now fill you in on what I called you for. Thanks for arriving on such short notice." There was something certainly unnerving on how unthreatened McGonagall sounded.
"On the first issue, yes these are Draco and his mother Narcissa Malfoy, wife of Lucius Malfoy, who you have personally met quite enough times, and as well, their son. There is no polyjuice, disguise spell or confundous charm involved. I've made sure of that."
"I can tell."
Harry said with his eyes on Malfoy, whose face, Harry felt, nobody could reproduce beyond the physical aspects like this. ("Well that would have saved me a bit of time," the Headmistress noted.) They glared to one another for a brief time before McGonagall continued.
"Yes," she said, disregarding them. "We have had a bit of talking before you arrived. Mrs Malfoy here has requested for our help giving her and her son hiding from the dark lord. You will find this is a very important decision, and I want you to be part of it, Potter."
Something seemed to click on Harry's mind like he had been walking with his eyes closed the moment he walked into the room.
Suddenly, a known feeling formed in him. The sight of the two Malfoys, not just the general picture like a photograph, produced in him anything but hostility. Moreover, the notion of responsibility felt as relief and not a burden.
After the first shaken silence, Harry looked from one to the other, and his eyes suddenly strayed to one of Dumbledore's old possessions.
"I believe there was a way – Dumbledore was thinking of a way to hide a person, making them appear dead."
Draco eyes widened slightly which was a brief notice against McGonagall's sudden statement, "That's an excellent idea, Potter – How would you two see fit such arrangements?"
Narcissa spoke instantly without a look at the shocked face of his son, "It sounds like a marvelous idea. Please proceed as you see fit."
McGonagall nodded. "I will see to it. Then there's the matter of your dwelling."
"So you will do it? Just like that?!" said Draco suddenly and not a bit less skeptical. "What are you playing–"
Narcissa put a hand on her son's shoulder, promptly silencing him. McGonagall turned to Harry,
"I have understood you have your reasons to think of helping this situation, and I trust nobody better than you to tell me Draco Malfoy and his family deserves my help. So, again I repeat the decision will be yours, Harry."
Harry stared back at McGonagall, switching his sight briefly to the Malfoys; the three were staring at him. He looked at Draco. A series of flashes, of memories reproduced before him, distant, of everything Draco Malfoy had done to him and the answer was a breath away. His answer would be the difference if the two of them were left at bay or offered something better…
Harry slowly nodded, said, "I'll find a place for you and your mother."
This incredible revelation was only protested by the sound of Draco's voice.
"But I can't go back to Hogwarts!" Draco urged McGonagall. "Half the school that night saw or know I left with Death Eaters!"
"I can offer shelter to both but," McGonagall started, "I do think, like Mr Malfoy, this might not be the best place for him." Harry swiftly turned to her. But where could it be safer than Hogwarts? he thought bewildered.
"Might I suggest your current address?"
McGonagall was looking at Harry with a meaningful look. Harry's eyes went wide. "No! How will I trust Malfoy there? It's the Headquarters –"
"It is true that it's a risk, but so is too with Mr Malfoy here. Now, Potter, if you remember, Severus Snape had access to the Headquarters but he has not yet spoken. That tells us the Fidelius is still in effect. Now, it will be a bit problematic to get Mr Malfoy in, but I'm sure Albus left us some kind of tool."
"Living with Potter!" said Draco interrupting them once again, with an inconclusive tone of disbelief. "But –"
McGonagall cut him short, "You will find there aren't many alternatives, Mr Malfoy. You are to appear dead to the eyes of all. Your mother can stay at Hogwarts, though. She should be safe and not many will know her true identity. We are giving shelter to so many families she should blend with the rest."
McGonagall looked at the shocked faces of the two boys, just as Narcissa spoke, "Yes… yes, I agree on the terms."
"Mother?" pleaded Draco. But Narcissa Malfoy was impassive, facing at all times forwards, "Do as they say, Draco, and go with them."
McGonagall drew potions from the shelf behind them. "For disguise," she explained, "Slughorn provided them for us. Take one, Potter, you too."
The atmosphere was awkward: Harry felt odd standing there with the bottle in his hands and the two Malfoys were similarly uncomfortable. "Ah, one last thing, if you could just wait outside the door..."
Without a second pause, Narcissa Malfoy nodded and headed outside, his son hesitant or maybe reluctant followed in a slow pace looking back one last time.
"Are you sure about this?" Harry said, gesturing the door. "Leaving them alone."
"They've come on their own accord all this way. I doubt they'll run away this deep into the plot." McGonagall lowered herself into the desk chair. "Now we can tend to that issue."
"I can't," he told her at once. He expected this since he received the owl from McGonagall. "I know you really are in need but, my role at Hogwarts –"
"It could be a crucial point for moving your pieces, Harry. I don't deny I'm quite in need of somebody to take on the role of Defense Against Dark Arts professor for a year, but I don't plan to hide that I also think it should be advantageous to you in your quest."
Harry concentrated in a random spot. She had a point but, there was too the issue of how much he could put in both tasks at the time. "It's just… I don't have much time. I'm flattered, I really am… I'll think about it."
It as the best he could do for now: give it a bit of consideration. How this would clash with the most recent events, he didn't know.
They exited the office late afterwards after the setting sun; escorting them there was also Shacklebolt who was in charge of McGonagall's security that night. The evening had drifted away, a two-way conversation between McGonagall and Draco's mother discussing details of the Malfoys accommodations. Harry led the two Malfoys to the North Tower where the tents were kept, their backs against the tip of his wand.
Narcissa surprisingly stopped walking, to add to Harry's tipsiness. "Rather than victims we seem prisoners," she said acidly.
Harry pointed his wand at face-level. "You and your son have given me no reasons to trust you both."
"If my son gave his word, then he plans not to harm you," Narcissa said resolutely sideways. Her expression edged outrage.
"I'll believe it when he proves it," Harry retorted with an equally defiant glare.
They resumed walking.
There was a tense atmosphere in the air of this damp, dark tunnel. It bothered Harry how his decision had no seem his own, how he would even think he should look forwards to this opportunity, as he had back in McGonagall's office. Moreover, how Malfoy could almost look unwilling with what sacrifices this meant to everybody.
When in retrospective, Harry and Draco were mere public, passive observers after verbal agreement. The idea of helping this selfish git suddenly seemed ridiculous.
"This is it," said Shacklebolt in a manner that was all too sudden for Malfoy.
Narcissa, who had remained calm and serene all this time, nodded and turned to fling her arms around her son. Draco, amidst apprehension, did nothing to return the hug.
It was most cold. The hug could not last longer and they parted at last without another look at the other's eyes. The last of her mother's words were "Take care, Draco."
He and Potter watched Narcissa Malfoy go with Shacklebolt. They had been so cold, even Harry would have wished they had said goodbye in another terms.
"What now," drawled Draco as the secret passageway door closed. Harry had the same hard look, "Now we wait for Shacklebolt to come back."
--
It was odd to see students at summer holidays loitering in the halls. Harry skipped though corridors evading what felt like midget versions of him dressed in Gryffindor robes. He climbed the stairs behind the gargoyle again and into the office.
"Here," Harry gasped upon opening the door. McGonagall was rounding the office in a hurry herself. "Come in, Harry. I'm expecting the owl any minute, I'll be in the other room. You go on ahead."
She walked though the door and disappeared behind. It was with few tentative steps then hurrying the lasts that he stepped in front of Dumbledore's portrait. The frame was empty.
"Professor?" he asked, puzzled.
Finally, from behind right frame of the portrait, came a blue, starred pointed hat in a face and subsequent white hair and long beard hiding the twinkling blue eyes staring at Harry. The sight constricted his stomach and left him a cold chill on the chest, a nostalgic happy feeling that pulled the corners of his mouth tightly in a sad smile.
"Harry," was all Dumbledore needed to do, and to flood in a series of memories Harry hadn't realized he had put aside. There was nothing sad in the way Dumbledore's portrait spoke, the same twinkling eyes shone back at him with his same intensity as when alive.
They stared at each other with understatement in their eyes. The Dumbledore in the portrait almost seemed a stranger to his death.
It wasn't until Harry reached to rub his left eye behind the glasses that he spoke, "Professor, we need help going into Grimmauld Place, but it's a person who hasn't been let on before. How can we let somebody in who wasn't let in on the secret while you – when the secret keeper has died."
Dumbledore smiled satisfied, "Of course, it'd be quite an inefficient headquarter if it won't let space for new members. Now I believe, if you turn this portrait..."
Harry grinned, turning it around. It was a single slip of paper stuck on the frame. He turned the picture again, Dumbledore was saying something ("For an eventuality such as these –")
Harry frowned. "Only one?" he said, turning the slip of paper in his hand.
Dumbledore nodded quite simplistically. "There is more, I believe you will have to ask Kreacher for them."
"Kreacher has them?" Harry inquired.
"Sirius had him obey one simple rule about them: to never give them to anyone but you. These plans were made at the time of the decision that you would inherit everything else. But, in case something was to happen to Kreatcher, I left one single slip behind."
Dumbledore smiled with the old twinkle in his eyes. Harry smiled back. Then smiling sadly, almost apologetically, he spoke.
"Why did you have to go? Hogwarts still needs you, more than they need me. I wished I had died instead."
A strong stinging feeling had attacked his eyes, aching for a good rub. Neither spoke for as long as Harry rubbed his eyes in a fashion he might have hurt himself. Dumbledore, however, sat himself in the portrait desk, and waited.
"I should not have been the one to live," Harry repeated thoughtlessly. He gave his eye one last rub and felt a certain numb easiness, like exhaustion when he breathed.
The portrait spoke unexpectedly, Dumbledore was solemn.
"I once said death is but the next adventure. But, Harry, you should never seek to die. You must hold on to life very tightly, for it's a precious gift, until the time comes when we all must say goodbye."
Harry shut his eyes hard, took and replaced his glasses over his nose. After a brief moment of pause, he asked, "Why did you trust Snape?"
The question was out before he could think more of it. Dumbledore looked back at Harry with the face of some one who would put his foot down, stand against being cornered or answer unwilling, but who was also patient.
"You already know that answer, Harry, it was concealed from the beginning in your nemesis' eyes," Dumbledore had said.
"Voldemort?" Harry asked.
"No, I meant Mr Malfoy."
Harry shook his head at this odd response and concentrated in the subject, defensive, "But Snape always was an ogre to me."
"He treated you the only way he knew how to; as he treated your father, Harry. They held much hostility towards one another, yet if you think he felt no link towards the other, you are mistaken. I'll tell you, Harry, Severus came to me when he knew your parents were on peril."
"But Snape killed you –"
"I'll answer no more questions, Harry."
Harry would have spoken anyways of what the portrait didn't appear to know, he should tell him. But the Dumbledore in the portrait had moved out, not reappearing though the next frame.
--
"Drink."
Even though Potter had the courtesy of shoving the foul-smelling potion under his nose, it didn't make the proposition any more appealing. "Polyjuice?" Draco asked, sneering down at the vial.
"We need to exit though the front gates, nobody can recognize you," Harry told him serious. He would have used the passage to Hogsmeade, but he didn't trust Malfoy enough with that little secret. "McGonagall got the hairs. It cannot look like you are walking with me down the corridor like buddies, now can it?"
Draco sneered hatefully a second time, taking the vial roughly from Potter's hand. He glared at it giving himself courage to drink, then swallowed a gulp.
The reaction was instant; he was doubling over with his hand on his stomach screwing his face. Harry had almost no time to reach for the potion before he lost the grip of it.
Suddenly, Malfoy skin was slightly darker, his hair going curly and darkening rapidly as well, his hair also got... longer? Unlike Ron's height, Malfoy was shrinking; his hair was way too dark to be Ron's, and for a second Harry thought Draco was transforming in a Terrier Spanish. And then there were a pair of things in his chest that shouldn't definitely be there...
"What have you done to me?!" The face of Hermione stared back with panic.
Harry stared with the urge of slamming his face into his fist. "Erm," he said ever too eloquently, "there's been a mistake --"
"I say!" Draco replied. He was looking at his hands, his long hair and apparently avoided looking down, suddenly he caught his reflection in a nearby window and paled. "The Mudblood! You made me into the mudblood?!"
Suddenly Harry had slammed Hermione's slim figure into a wall, his fist closing in the neck of Malfoy's shirt. "Don't you call Hermione that if you don't want to spend your hiding years in Azkaban."
He released Malfoy and waited for him to retort. When he didn't give any, Harry added in a slightly more comprehensive tone, "It's a disguise as any other. Now at least it would make sense you are tagging along me."
Malfoy made a derisive noise. "Fortunate of me, I get to follow Potter around like his loving fangirl, yay," he said scathingly.
Harry lingered at the door of the passageway, grimaced, but shook his head clear. Pushing the door open, "C'mon," he told Malfoy.
The light of the corridor was momentarily blinding. Harry kept a wary eye on Malfoy, the latter walking lazily behind in his usual air of superiority and contempt. Passing by, a couple of girls ogled at them funny.
"Malfoy..." Sideways, Harry mumbled irritably, "Drop that face."
"What?" Malfoy asked with a face screwed in incredulity.
"You're Hermione, and Hermione is one of my best friends."
"So?"
"So Hermione doesn't wear that expression," Harry bit back, cracking his neck to look at him. "Play out your role better; you need to act more like Hermione."
Malfoy answered this with his own mock dawning expression, edging towards irritable, "So, do you reckon I should suck up to you, Potter?"
Harry sneered right back at him.
"I suppose you'd prefer its Draco Malfoy sucking up to Harry Potter."
To an outsider, no doubt it looked quite out of character the way the glared or sneered at each other. "Just relax your face or something," Harry finally added as they resumed walking.
But he did not get far because, just behind him, a voice like a pang in his chest sounded somewhere near closely followed by a crash sound and a metal goblet tumbled hard on the floor. Harry had only made out her voice calling him when interjected by the sound of Hermione's own ("Watch it, mugg—") and the sight of Hermione praying violently from Ginny's touch.
Harry turned to them at once. "Ginny?"
She was looking at Hermione curiously, and just then Harry noticed the front of her robes soaked in pumpkin juice. Plus, there was Hermione's own amused expression. Apparently, Malfoy had not stopped talking to keep his disguise but for better appreciating his accidental handiwork.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked, turning to her just managing a short glare at Malfoy. She had not been the first person Harry would wish to see, much less in these present circumstances.
"Yeah, I…" Ginny looked to Hermione-Draco again whose face had clearly relaxed but replaced with an unpleasant, fake, cold apologetic look.
"Why, hi, you," Malfoy said with no better thinking of a way to address her, "let me tell you, orange suits you: matching family hair."
He could be clearly seen though disguise: Malfoyishness poured out from everywhere in that smile. Ginny looked like she could "huh", shook her head and turned to Potter.
"Hi, Harry," she said neglecting Draco who was partially blocking the way. "So it was true, I heard from somebody that you were in the castle." Her face brightened with a smile. "We have been staying, the whole family in Hogwarts in the summer.
"I was thinking, since you are back –" but Harry, upon proximity and something else, said right away, "It's not what you think."
At the same time Ginny was saying "start where we left."
"I can't stay," Harry elaborated. Ginny's expression dropped. The corner of "Hermione's" lip turned smugly. It unsettled Harry that Malfoy would use Hermione's face to look like that. "I'm sorry, I told McGonagall," he said again, sideways still glaring at Hermione's way.
"But if we went to the grounds for a second –"
"I can't right now," he gave another look at Malfoy's direction.
"– can't hurt," finished Ginny and now her expression was not pleading but mad, "But why! We never see! You don't want to be with me, not once before you go off wherever you go."
"Now, now, ah, Ginny," came a drawl, "you sure want to make a scene in the here and the now?"
Malfoy had spoken though Hermione's mouth, his amusement still shining in her eyes though restrained by the bit of control Draco was exercising to have a diplomatic pretense, albeit rather mean look, on Hermione's face.
"I believe you have heard the man has more important things to do, that with saving the world and all that," continued Draco in what Harry recognized as his attempt on an exaggerated matter-of-factly Hermione-tone.
"And I believe the busy Harry Potter has also dumped you last year. I would think by now you would have understood the message," nasty, Draco added. "I will tell you what I think; I think even I get more attention from your boyfriend that you do, Weasley. Actually, of course I do."
"I don't –?" Ginny was clearly disoriented with the way Hermione was speaking. Draco made a hand motion with 'her' hair that looked like Pansy rather than Hermione. A sight to groan to.
This was nothing new. This was Malfoy being Malfoy. Harry wanted to say something, but hesitated in the act; he would have said it had their plan not required heavily on that nobody should find out about Malfoy. At any rate, Harry got the impression Ginny must have believed Hermione was trying to stick up to him.
"This is nothing of your concern, Hermione, stay out of it," she said, acidly.
Malfoy chuckled on Hermione's voice. "Why, doesn't Potter's girl have a loud mouth?" His sneer reappeared with sinister pleasure, "Or should I say, one of Potter's girls."
He stressed the "s" a hiss. Ginny looked ready to turn to Potter when her face got dragged back to look at Hermione, "– girls?"
"Why, isn't it obvious?" Hermione answered condescendingly, hooking one of Potter's arms into hers. Ginny looked taken aback but quickly recovered, just as quick Harry had parted from the impostor in shock.
"A bit jealous are you?" Ginny bit back. "I never knew you, Hermione."
Harry wanted to say something but –
"Jealous!" Malfoy replied with hilarity almost fake and seemly forgetting in whose shoes he was walking. "What would I be jealous about: your privileged social position, your lack of proper wizarding education or your mental capacity to understand them?"
Ginny must have thought Hermione meant it because she was one year behind Hermione and Harry. She said, "That I spent so much time with Harry.And that I'm much more woman than you are."
"Woman? You call –" Draco took a moment to get into Hermione-mode, and resumed: "You can hardly call that underdeveloped body of yours a woman's, Ginny."
The name came amiably and Harry stretched his knuckles. Malfoy was pushing it. It was the top of the iceberg that Draco had turned to him and mouthed the word 'Harry' with the same tone – as if it was a joke only Malfoy or this Hermione and he shared. Ginny easily picked that look.
"I suppose you should know about the bodies Harry Potter prefers, then," Ginny asked besides herself.
"Beats me," confessed Hermione. "'Cannot believe Potter dumped a good body like Chang's for one like yours, Weasley."
Ginny's cheeks turned pink.
"Hard to believe to you, isn't it?" Ginny gave his own retort, nastily.
"If I didn't know better, I would suggest you paid him to be your boyfriend, but then again, I know you can't afford Harry Potter."
Eyes grew wide.
"Hermione!" Ginny said outraged.
"It's not her," Harry said instantly, stepping in front of the two, and looking at Ginny. He blocked the Hermione from view as Ginny looked like she was ready to curse her (frankly, he could not blame her). Ginny turned her eyes to Harry, a question in them. "I'll explain you later," even now, the only answer he could give her.
Harry turned around and took the fake Hermione by the wrist, furious dragging Malfoy along towards the gates of Hogwarts. Practically it looked like Malfoy could not care less after that laugh. Potter glared at him but Malfoy's hilarity extended though his punchline, "What? I was acting out my part." Ginny could only stare after them.
That sour moment lasted much later after Malfoy was done with his laughing, up on a carriage to Hogsmeade. He left Ginny like that… why did he even had to meet her! Because she wanted to see you, a little voice in Harry's head played.
He groaned. Everything was wrong. He would need at least five different stories to patch it all up.
Malfoy was astonishingly pleasant during their trip, which meant he was sulking bored. Just about a tiny fragment more than the alternative, but Harry was appreciating the change from a laughing fit. At that time Harry was, stronger than ever, having his doubts about this.
He descended the carriage not without closing his fist on Malfoy's sleeve and dragging him along, as if the feeling of holding Malfoy where he could see him was the only comfort… if not a bit cathartic.
But Draco let himself be dragged around the shops like a walking lump of clothes, though wizards and between shops and reaching a spot of concealment in forestation.
Finally, Harry let go of Malfoy's arms, the latter praying from him violently even as Harry had already released him, just to show his spite. Harry was finding that every time he looked at Draco a surge of fury spurred within him. Draco mirrored the hate in his expression.
"Hold on to me," Harry said without turning a hair.
But Malfoy turned to him, looking bewildered, "What?!"
Harry, serious to the point of looking angry, said, "We're going to Side-Apparate, the least you know where we're going the better."
He was holding out his arm but Draco had stepped back. "No way am I going to hold on you," he said. His mother was one thing, but him?
"And we can't apparate here! This is Ministry Apparition Control Eye area! Don't you know anything, Potter?"
The look on Potter's face was a little more than blatant; priceless. The weight of truth crushed Potter's attempt at looking un-lost; it exceeded his capacity.
Lightly now, Draco elaborated, "My name in one of those documents is like running up to them with a red flag shouting 'Hello, trolls, I'm here!'"
Harry looked around but saw no way though it at the current point. "And where would be an area not watched by the Ministry?" he asked, one elusive glance revolting though the area as if he attempted to perceive it himself.
Draco shrugged, covering up his own ignorance. "Various points in the different Wizarding Areas, and many underground or muggle…"
He remembered where he had apparated at with his mother just this morning. In fact, the impression of apparating away on his own and to freedom felt tempting. But he could not leave his mother behind.
"There's also," Draco continued, "the issue of the where we are apparating to. How do you know your apparating point is safe? What, I suppose the hero Harry Potter didn't mind to be on the knowledge of these things before because the Ministry is lax with idol of the Wizarding World."
There was another quick motion in which Harry had grabbed hold of Malfoy's wrist and forced him to face his furious face. "Or I just didn't need it since I've never been a wanted criminal," he said dangerously. "Stop pushing my buttons, Malfoy. If you hadn't noticed, I'm helping you over here."
He released Malfoy and went on, "For what I reckon, you should be pleading and in your knees to ask my help and I should be torturing you with ambiguous answers. In fact, I won't move another step before you say please."
Malfoy looked bewildered, but there was no change in his scorn.
"Or else you can choose to go back to your hole, wherever it was that you were hiding before. Don't worry, your mother can stay here since she's a tad bit politer."
Draco antagonized with his fear of going back leaving his mother, and the humiliation of begging on his knees, twisting his face into a grimace. The latter feeling overruled the first. Draco looked full of spite.
"You have nerve, breaking your word."
He raised his chin, dignified by the action, and started walking away. Harry stared back. He should have known Malfoy would be such a prick as to refuse to say "please."