"Mr. Malfoy? You can come out now." He heard, and his heart completely stopped.
Oh, crap. She was going to turn him in.
"Really, Mr. Malfoy, we both know that I know you are there. Please just come out."
He resigned himself to leaving his cone of safety, stiff muscles screaming their protest and needles shooting up his legs from disuse.
Cockily, he smirked at her, snapping back into a character he had long created for himself. "Why hello there, Headmistress. What can I do for you today?"
The middle aged witch barked a sarcastic laugh. "Cut the crap, Malfoy. We both know I can get you in a world of trouble right now. The ministry has been rounding up suspected Death Eaters, your parents included, and you've been hiding in that spot for about ten hours now."
"If you were going to turn me in, you would have already." He stated, sure of this thought.
The Headmistress narrowed her eyes at him, and just like it had when he was eleven years old, the stare made him squirm. There was something about her that made him want to please her. Call it her authority as a teacher—one of Hogwarts' strictest, or call it her inherit austere attitude that invoked his desire to be accepted into the elite. She took no crap; she only accepted the best of people. And he wanted her to see that potential in him.
Even as a student of the house in a rivalry with hers, he had secretly wanted to please her. At twelve he had found himself, on a number of occasions, spending up to three times as long on one of her essays as he had for the essays Snape, his own Head of House, handed out. He put a great deal of thought and effort into his work in her Transfiguration class, not that he would ever tell anyone else, on pain of death.
As far as everyone else in Slytherin went, Draco hated McGonagall and all that had to do with Gryffindor.
"Yes, but I can still call them back. No one would be surprised if a rogue Death Eater had hidden away." She let that sink in for a moment, then continued. "But, if you agree to my proposal, that won't be a problem."
"Your proposal?" He asked while trying to sound bored.
"Yes. I know you overheard my conversation with Mr. Potter and Miss Granger. You are going to help me repair the school." She said this as an order, like it was already going to happen.
A startled Draco Malfoy quickly nixed any emotion he might have let slip. "Me? I'm the assistant you had in mind?"
"Why, yes. Yes, you are."
She then started walking away from him. After she got halfway down the hallway and realized he wasn't following, she made a vague gesture with her hand for him to catch up.
"Come along, we have much to do and little time to do it in."
"But—but—" he sputtered. "Where will I stay? How will we repair the castle if we can't use magic? Why are you letting me stay here? What are you going to do when the Ministry says I'm missing? What if—"
"Mr. Malfoy!" She cut him off, still moving down the hallway, with a reluctant Draco now moving behind her, "We will discuss that later. The only question that needs to be answered right now is by you: are you or are you not going to help?"
At her pointed look, Draco sighed. "You knew before you even asked me that I would help, Professor."
"And that is the first thing I've ever heard you say that was actually you, Draco."
This time he didn't even attempt to hide the surprise that filtered across his porcelain features. "Say what?"
McGonagall rolled her eyes, the first gesture Draco had ever seen her use that would intimate impatience. Really, the woman was full of patience. People just tended to forget that while she was teaching because she demanded the best.
"If you must know, I've always seen through that little act of yours." She stated rather plainly, like they both knew what she was talking about and it didn't even need to be said.
"What act? What are you talking about?"
Still briskly moving down the hallway, she half-turned her head to answer him. "The one where you act like you think you're better than everyone else. I can tell you just play that up, Draco. The boy who wrote those wonderful essays over six years of classes does not think muggle-borns are below him. The boy who wrote those essays does not believe in Pureblood supremacy. You were just a pawn in a much larger game. A leaf, if you will, caught in a gale."
Draco looked at her incredulously. She really saw all that? He barely even allowed himself to know the truth.
She continued on, brushing passed his incoherent thoughts. "And that is why I am allowing you to stay here. If I return you to the Ministry now, all they will see is a Death Eater—marked and everything. But, if I return you in a year's time… Well, then perhaps they will see what I can see: a young boy too scared for his own life, the lives of his family, and his way of life to act. Though, there's really not much you could have done. Even as a spy like Severus, there's not much you would be able to tell us that he hadn't already informed us of.
"No, it's best for you to stay here with me. When the school is complete, you'll have that under your belt. And the ministry will look bad in the press for arresting the boy who re-built Hogwarts. Even if they don't admit it, every single witch or wizard in England has a soft spot as far as this school is concerned. If they see that you cared enough about it to invest so much time into it, and furthermore under my tutelage, then they will be more inclined to forgive you."
"So, basically we're deceiving the whole world?"
"Not exactly. We're… influencing the truth. Because the truth is, you'll have re-built a wizarding monument. Death Eaters may have torn it down, but a young wizard with many heavy burdens took the time to mend the heart of England. Make no mistake, Hogwarts is the heart of England."
They were silent for another hallway or two. Draco followed his Headmistress mechanically, barely paying enough attention to know what floor they were on, let alone where they were headed. Eventually, they stopped in front of a blank space of wall. McGonagall then turned to him.
"One of your many questions earlier was where you would stay, if I recall correctly. You may stay here. The password is just your name for now. I didn't figure there was much point in naming a password when it was just the two of us. You may change it whenever you wish, though. Now, memorize where it is, because you won't have reason to come back here for a while. We must plan, first, and then make our attack."
"You make it sound like we're going to battle."
"In a way we are." She answered without really answering. "My office is just over there, let's adjourn there to talk. Come." And off they went again, feet slamming loudly in the too quiet halls, a tall youth and a wise witch—the unlikeliest of duos.