Chapter 10: Father and the Serpent

Now that Warrington had secured his place as Slytherin's third Chaser, the Quidditch season officially began for them. Draco attended the practices, even if he wasn't allowed on the pitch per Madam Pomfrey's orders. He went to the changing room before and after practice to hear whatever Flint had to say.

"All right," Flint addressed the team on a Wednesday practice. "Few things, Malfoy."

Draco lifted his chin.

"First, has Madam Pomfrey said anything yet about Saturday?" Flint asked. "She's not showing any hints of changing her mind about you losing the sling?"

Draco shook his head. "She's still happy with how I'm coming along, and she's happy I've gone so long without setting myself back."

"Brilliant." Flint flashed a mouthful of teeth. "I've also found out who Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff have picked for their new Seekers."

"Oh?" Draco's stomach flipped in mingled curiosity and nerves.

"Ravenclaw's is a complete newcomer. She's a fourth-year named Cho Chang."

Draco wasn't sure he knew who she was. "All right."

"Hufflepuff didn't manage to find one." Flint grinned again. "Diggory's taking it. He picked a new Chaser to replace himself."

"So a newbie and someone who isn't usually a Seeker," Draco repeated for confirmation. "And I won't suppose Gryffindor has changed anything up?"

"Not in the slightest. They've the exact same lineup as the last two seasons."

Draco nodded. He hadn't bothered to hope that Potter might not be on the field this year, but it still made him nervous. In two years of Potter being Gryffindor Seeker, Draco still hadn't managed to attend a match where he paid close attention to Potter's play-style.

He came to in a dark dormitory on Saturday morning, immediately wide awake. Today was the day to remove his sling.

Draco wondered if Madam Pomfrey would be awake yet. Being careful not to rouse the other boys, he carefully dressed and headed off. He only made it as far as the stairs out of the dungeons before slowing to a stop.

Justin Finch-Fletchley sat in one of the stone windowsills, gazing out at the lake. He looked rather tired—even more so than it being seven o'clock on a weekend morning ought to call for, in Draco's opinion.

Justin regarded Draco in a careful way when he noticed him.

"Finch-Fletchley," Draco greeted him.

"Malfoy."

Draco considered the stairs heading up toward the ground floor before taking a few leisurely steps toward Justin instead. "What are you doing up so early?"

Justin shrugged. "You?"

"My sling is due to come off today, so long as Madam Pomfrey keeps her word about it." Draco lifted his right shoulder in further emphasis, pleased that it no longer hurt to do so. "D'you reckon it's too early to bother her?"

Justin pressed his lips and hummed as he studied Draco's arm. "Yeah, maybe, unless it's an emergency."

"Definitely the last thing I need her thinking is that there's some sort of emergency about my arm," Draco replied.

Justin exhaled a spurt of air before returning to seriousness. "Were you actually injured?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Have you never seen the talons on one of those bloody things?"

"Not up close," Justin said. "We're doing Flobberworms."

"Us too." Draco wrinkled his nose.

Justin assessed Draco's arm again. "Was it pretty bad? The cuts, I mean?"

"They were lacerations." Draco had heard that word often enough now, and had seen quite starkly how they differed from a simple cut. "They went into the muscle. It was so nasty. You could see a tendon in the worst one."

Justin's eyebrows popped up. "That didn't get cut, did it?"

Draco shook his head.

"I suppose you'd be in a lot worse shape, if it had," Justin mused. "I don't know how Madam Pomfrey would fix that, if she's not a surgeon."

"It's not something I have to think about, thankfully." Draco leaned his shoulder against the wall, glancing out toward the lake for sight of the giant squid. "Once I get this sling off, the rest should be easy. The wounds have closed, but now there's muscular scar tissue to clean up. I have to use some sort of salve to soften it."

"That's cool you can do that," Justin replied. "I bet my father would have a lot of use for it."

Draco thought about it for a moment. "He works with brains, doesn't he?"

Justin nodded.

"So what does scar tissue do to a brain?" Draco asked. "Madam Pomfrey told me that the scar tissue in my arm will make it harder to move for a little while. But we don't move our brains. Or do we?"

"You should hope you don't." Justin grinned briefly with jest. "The brain's not meant to be solid, and that's what scar tissue is. It can even change your personality."

Draco grimaced. "Actually?"

"My father told me about a patient like that, once," Justin said. "He was a quiet man all his life, and then he was stabbed in the head. He survived and became really talkative afterward."

"Huh."

"The scar tissue eventually killed him, though," Justin quietly added. "He got dementia, and it was all downhill from there."

"What's dementia?" Draco couldn't help but think about Dementors, for the similarity of words.

"You start forgetting stuff, and you can't do things you used to be able to. Things like that."

"So it's like losing your mind."

"Yeah," Justin said. "You could put it that way."

They fell quiet with thought. Justin toyed idly with his fingers in his lap. He went back to looking out the window while Draco studied him.

"How does that work with being Petrified?" Draco asked. "Is that like scar tissue? Is it like your whole body is a scar, because it goes solid like that?"

Justin shook his head. "That's different."

"How?"

"I don't know." Justin looked back at Draco. "I reckon you wouldn't still be dealing with your arm if you could just take some Mandrake Draught."

Draco grunted. "You'd think it would work."

"Medicine is complicated," Justin said. "I suppose the same thing goes for Healing. My father had to go to school for like ten years before he could practice—and that's only counting university and whatnot. Not secondary."

"Secondary?"

"Like NEWT level, basically."

"Oh yeah."

"Even Madam Pomfrey said she was a Healer for like thirty years before she came to work at Hogwarts. That's what she told my parents, when. . ." Justin trailed off. "Something like that, anyway. Thirty years at this school, and just as many before that at St Mungo's. My parents wanted me to go home when I was Petrified, so they could take care of me."

"What would they have done?" Draco asked.

"Nothing. Well—I'm sure they would have tried everything. But they couldn't have done anything to help me. Muggle medicine is useless against magical injuries."

"I suppose only magic can deal with magic."

"Mhm."

Draco hadn't gotten up this morning intending for guilt to curdle to life in his stomach, but here he was. While a chair had sat empty beside Ernie Macmillan in Transfiguration and Charms lessons last year, Draco hadn't put that much thought toward the person who would have filled it.

"You know," Justin spoke. "I've been thinking a lot about what you said about Potter."

Draco furrowed his brow. "Which bit?"

"About him having something to do with it." Justin rested the back of his head against the stone. "I thought the same, you know, when I saw the Basilisk—before I didn't remember anything. Potter pushed a snake toward me the night before, and then here comes an even bigger snake. It made sense."

"Sure," Draco said, heart beating a little faster.

"Then I came back, and I was told that Potter had killed it." Justin's lips pressed. "He hasn't said a word to me since."

"No?"

"Not that he has to," Justin hastily added. "It's not like we were friends before that whole thing happened. I'd tried, sort of. You know, strike up a conversation here and there. I guess being who he is, he chooses his friends really carefully."

"I tried with him too, although he was rude before he even knew who I was—or before I knew who he was."

"Maybe he assumed you did know," Justin said.

Madam Malkin's shop had been too long ago to remember the specifics, and Draco had perhaps been out of sorts since Grandfather Malfoy died less than a week prior. "I tried to make him laugh, but he wouldn't. Maybe he just didn't get the joke."

"What was it?"

"I told him I was going to bully my father into buying me a racing broom." A smile started to come up over Draco. "And that I was going to smuggle it here."

Justin tilted his head, lips parted in thought.

"You don't get it either?" Draco stepped off with a dramatic sigh and overly-scrunched face. That made Justin laugh. "Go on! You haven't ever heard the saying, 'walking like they're smuggling a broomstick'?"

Justin groaned before dropping his face in his hands.

"It's funny!" Draco exclaimed. "Right?"

Justin was laughing, so there was that. "Muggles usually say 'walking like they soiled their pants', or something."

"Well, see, that's just crude."

Justin snorted again. "And shoving an entire broomstick up your arse isn't?"

With a grunt, Draco waved it off. He leaned against the wall again.

"So that's what started it all, huh?" Justin asked. "Between the two of you?"

"I suppose, yes," Draco said. "I've gotten tangled up in his bollocks a few times, and it's never to anything good. I don't know which would be worse: being his friend or his enemy. Either way, you get the short stick. It's best just to stay away entirely."

"That sounds like good advice," Justin replied. "Are you going to follow it?"

Draco scoffed, which made Justin laugh again. "I don't get that choice, unfortunately. I have to deal with him in Quidditch, and it's his great oaf of a friend's fault that I was injured. Can you honestly believe they let Hagrid teach?"

"Can I believe it? Yeah." Justin wrinkled his nose. "Does that mean it's a good thing? You can tell Hagrid thinks the lessons are boring."

"He has a fascination with dangerous creatures, you know." Draco lifted his nose. "Do you know why he was the one taken away to Azkaban when the Ministry and school governors had to get involved with the attacks?"

Justin shook his head.

"My father told me he was expelled for raising an Acromantula in the dungeons."

Justin's eyes went wide. "One of those massive spiders?"

"Yes, one of those." Draco gave him a significant look. "Now! Could you just imagine what he would have done had he known it was a Basilisk attacking students? 'Oh, he wasn' meanin' no harm, it's not his fault people go stiff when he looks at 'em. . .' Honestly, he would have probably looked for the bloody thing, to try and make it his next nasty pet."

"You think so?"

Draco laughed mirthlessly. "Did you never hear about the dragon?"

Justin's eyebrows leapt up. "Dragon?"

"Ohh, yes." Draco smirked. "I saw it myself, you know. He hatched a bloody dragon egg in his hut Easter before last—in our first year. It was a Norwegian Ridgeback, if that means anything to you."

Justin hummed. "Not really. I mean, not anything special over any other breed."

"They're very poisonous. They're very nasty." Draco drawled, studying the fingernails of his left hand. "Ron Weasley was bit by it, even. He spent a week or so in the hospital wing being treated for it."

"I think I remember him not being in lessons for a while, but I didn't think much of it."

"So, of course, the thing to do is to make Hagrid a teacher." Draco scoffed. "Ridiculous. He's lucky that Hippogriff only shredded my arm up. Imagine it had gotten my face."

"Or a major artery." Justin grimaced. "You can bleed out from those in seconds."

"There was a lot of blood. I passed out while Hagrid packed me into the school. And you should have seen the sheets on my hospital wing bed. You would've thought I had bled out."

"Some people think you're faking it all, you know," Justin said.

Draco exhaled derisively. "Right, because I'm having the time of my bloody life, falling behind on practical spellwork and not being able to train for Quidditch, or—" Draco stilted, for this didn't seem like the proper time for a wanking joke after having just joked about shoving a broomstick up one's arse, "—anything else. D'you want to come to the hospital wing with me? You should see the scars I'm going to be left with."

"I thought those were going to be cleaned up?"

"In the muscle." Draco shrugged. "Skin is different."

Justin hesitated, and Draco thought he had a pretty good idea why.

"You don't have to come, if you don't want," Draco hastily said. "I would imagine you saw enough of the hospital wing last year."

"I didn't really see much of it, honestly. Petrified, and all."

Draco snorted, but quickly cut himself off. "Sorry."

Justin only smiled and shrugged. "If you can't joke about it, what do you do?"

Before Draco could answer, Justin rose from the windowsill.

"Lead the way?" he said.

Draco jerked his head toward the stairs leading up to the Entrance Hall, and they fell in step together. "So what are you doing up so early?"

"It's hard to sleep sometimes," Justin said. "I don't like to sit in the common room much when that happens. The looks get old."

"The looks?"

"You know, the 'poor kid, he's probably had a nightmare' sort of looks."

"Why not just stay in your dorm?"

They turned up the staircase that would take them to the Entrance Hall as Justin replied. "I don't want to wake the other boys. They're good about it and all, but. . .you must know what it's like. You don't want to tire them out of you."

"Yeah," Draco agreed, although he wasn't certain he'd ever hit that point with the stubborn likes of Crabbe.

"They're good about it, and all," Justin quickly added with a glance at Draco. "It just gets a little. . ."

"Smothering?"

"Yes." Although Justin smiled, it had a guilty tinge to it.

"I know all about that, as well." Draco rolled his eyes. "There's a reason Madam Pomfrey doesn't give Crabbe a second glance if he ever comes to the hospital wing with me."

Justin laughed. "Which one's he?"

"Crabbe?" Draco asked. "Er, the taller one. His hair's longer."

"Oh yeah." Justin nodded. "Okay."

"You can't tell him and Goyle apart?" Draco paused. "I suppose they do sort of look alike. Their fathers are cousins, and their mums are sisters."

"They are?"

"I can't remember which of their parents met and married first, but the other pair met at the wedding." Draco narrowed his eyes in thought.

"So they're—what? Cousins and second-cousins?"

"Yes." Draco laughed along with Justin as they took their first step up the marble staircase. "It's honestly not an uncommon thing, mind, even just in British pureblood families. Their mums are from Odessa, though."

"In the Soviet Union—? Well, Russia now, I guess."

"Ukraine." Draco tilted his head. "What's the Soviet Union?"

Justin's head snapped toward Draco, his eyebrows as high as they could go. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"God, Malfoy, it was a whole thing." Justin's gape shrunk a little. "Although—I suppose it was only in the Muggle world. My whole family was absolutely glued to the news over the Christmas holiday in our first year. The entire thing collapsed."

Draco hummed, trying to remember if Tracey or Sophie had ever said anything about it.

"It's still going on right this minute," Justin added. "I heard some seventh-years talking about it, for Muggle Studies. There's a coup d'état happening in Moscow, or something."

"What's a coup d'état?"

Justin opened his mouth to answer, but had to think about it. "Kind of like a takeover, I think."

"You must be happy to be able to come into the wizarding world for most of the year, for bollocks like that," Draco said. "Our war is over."

"It's still not as boring here as I would like it to be." Justin scoffed mirthlessly. "Mind, Muggle Britain is also pretty quiet in comparison to all that out east."

"What about that whole business with Ireland?"

"Oh—yeah, I guess there's always that. But it's been going on for a very long time. My father thought things would get better after Thatcher was given the sack."

"But there they are?"

"There they are."

Maybe because they weren't bothering to mind the volume of their voices while they chatted, Madam Pomfrey had already emerged from her office when Draco and Justin arrived at the hospital wing. She stood there with her fists on her hips and an imperious look on her face. Draco grew antsy as she assessed him.

"Well, Mr Malfoy," she finally spoke. "The day has finally come."

Draco broke into an immediate grin. With a glance at Justin, he headed for the bed that had likely developed an imprint of his backside in the mattress. He'd gotten quite good at hopping up onto it one-handedly.

"And good morning to you, Mr Finch-Fletchley," Madam Pomfrey said as she and Justin followed in Draco's wake. "You've been doing well, I take it?"

"Haven't seen me in here, have you?"

Madam Pomfrey tittered at that, which was a slightly strange sound to hear. Maybe she too was in high spirits to see progress for Draco's injury. Soon enough, Draco reckoned, he had to be getting out of her hair completely.

The sling came off. Draco rolled his shoulder, but didn't dare move his arm freely just yet. Madam Pomfrey unwrapped his bandages. When the last layer of them came off, Draco glanced at Justin to see what sort of reaction the scars elicited in someone that wasn't used to seeing them.

Justin's face went slightly more pale. Draco tried then to see the red bands creating shallow indents on his forearm through new eyes. Especially since the salve Madam Pomfrey put on his arm everyday made it all slightly glisten, it looked a lot nastier than it felt. With a wave of Madam Pomfrey's wand, the remaining moisture on Draco's forearm departed.

"Hold your arm out straight for me please, palm down," Madam Pomfrey told Draco.

Draco did, and Madam Pomfrey assessed his scars. There was a slight pull to them, but this didn't seem—yet—to bother Madam Pomfrey much.

"Palm up," she requested.

The pull increased when Draco flipped his arm over.

"Keep turning your arm like that," she said.

Draco did.

"Well." Madam Pomfrey opened the tub of salve she'd brought over, to begin putting a fresh layer on Draco's forearm. "I don't believe regular movement is going to open the wounds back up. Regular movement, Mr Malfoy. I daresay the only one that would be more disappointed than I for such a setback at this point would be you."

"Yes." Draco returned the smile Justin was giving him over Madam Pomfrey's shoulder. "So no more sling?"

"No more sling, but you will continue your morning visits," she said. "The progress on that, we will have to play by ear. We will stop when the muscular scar tissue has dissolved. You'll know by feel when that time has come. I trust you to be honest with me, Mr Malfoy."

"I will be," Draco replied. "I don't like that pulling feeling. I want it gone."

"Good."

Draco didn't mind the bandages, really. He was used to them. Without the sling, the bandages only felt like the right arm of his jumper was thicker than usual.

Madam Pomfrey was just as satisfied that Draco standing up and moving his arm around came with no consequence. She sent Draco and Justin on their way. Draco couldn't believe how much he'd taken for granted simply being able to swing his arm as he walked.

"So what's the first thing you're going to do?" Justin asked. "Fly your broomstick?"

"That is very tempting." It had, in fact, been Draco's first thought. "I have so much homework to do, though. I've kept up with all the writing and studying parts of it, but I haven't had a chance to use my wand properly since term started."

"It's not too bad, catching up and all that," Justin said. "I'd expected a lot more in the summer, but Professor Sprout told me that teachers put most of the work at the front of the school year. Everyone's fresh, you know, and sometimes things happen in the year to slow things down. Plus, nobody likes to rush at the end when you're trying to prepare for exams, and all that."

"That makes sense." Draco walked past the passage to the Entrance Hall, since the eastern tower was a more direct route to where his wand, bag, and books remained in his dormitory. "I've kept a list of all the spells to work on, and it's actually rather short. Mostly it's for McGonagall and Flitwick. Everything else, I've managed. Slowly, but—"

BOOM.

Draco jumped, bouncing off Justin. The two of them looked around, then at each other. Draco's brow furrowed in time with Justin's.

"What was that?" Justin asked.

"No idea."

Draco craned his ears. It had sounded so close, but maybe it was just a massive explosion far away. Just when he opened his mouth to suggest they keep on, for maybe they'd only imagined it—

BOOM.

This time, Draco saw something. A cabinet at the side of the corridor bounced as whatever was inside bashed itself against the edge.

"What d'you reckon?" Draco asked.

"Peeves?"

Had the bang been followed by cackling laughter, Draco would have been satisfied to yell a few choice words and carry on. Instead, his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. His feet were rooted to the floor. He couldn't tear his gaze away from the cabinet.

There was a click as the cabinet's door unlatched, and then a creak as it opened enough to expose a dark gap. It sat there like that, the moment stretching longer and longer. The hair on the back of Draco's neck stood up.

"We should go," Justin said, but he seemed stuck where he stood as well.

There was movement in the dark gap—a hand appeared and pushed the door open with a long, high creak. Draco took a step back, but stopped again when he registered who had stepped out.

"Father?" Draco asked uncertainly.

Father stood up straight, dwarfing the cabinet with his height. He turned toward Draco and Justin, his upper lip curled into a sneer and his eyes livid.

"There you are, you little blood traitor." Father's voice sounded deeper and meaner as he advanced on them. "I've been looking all over the castle for you. Your mother is dead, and it's all your fault."

Every nerve in Draco's body jolted, and his diaphragm stopped moving.

"What?" he asked with what little air remained in his lungs.

"She's dead," Father repeated, practically barking. "You had to know it would happen, and yet you kept on."

Draco trembled. "I didn't—I didn't—Mum's—?"

Father reached into his robes and pulled out his wand. Draco felt like every part of his body spare his eyeballs disappeared from existence, or at least separated from his mind. He couldn't move. He couldn't feel anything. Draco couldn't say he'd ever looked into the eyes of someone intent for murder, but now he knew what it was like.

Father raised his wand above his head. As he brought it down, intent to throw what was likely the Killing Curse at Draco, his body started to elongate. Then, his limbs melted away into his body. Draco peered up at an ancient looking thing. Its head was like a dragon's, and its eyes like two yellow, penetrating lamps. As Draco stared frozen into those, there was a guttural yell beside him. The Basilisk's mouth opened, revealing two great, pointed fangs.

It reared back, then lunged. Draco clenched his eyes shut, braced for either blinding pain or deathly screams.

Neither came. Draco cracked his eyes open. It was like a white circle had eaten the Basilisk. It hung in the air like a gently glowing orb.

"Riddikulus," came a voice from behind Draco.

The orb shot off down the corridor. There was a thud as it collided with a wall, and then it kept on toward the Entrance Hall.

Draco panted as though he'd run the length of the school grounds. His skin felt cold and clammy, and his clothes stuck to him in places. All the heat had left the corridor. Heavy, shuddering breath sounded from Justin. Draco made to ask if he was all right, but he clearly wasn't. Justin's lips were practically blue, he was so pale. His cheeks were wet, and silent tears dripped off his chin. He still stared where the Basilisk had been.

Footsteps sounded behind them. As one, Draco and Justin yelped and swivelled on the spot. Professor Lupin stood there, one hand outstretched in a placating gesture and his wand at the side in the other.

"It's gone," he told them in a calm voice. "Come to my office."