Chapter 8 – Dinner and a Show
Saturday, 7:00 PM, August 31st, 2023 – The Dining Room, Malfoy Manor.
"What is this?" Draco asked and eyed the food containers on the table suspiciously.
"It's dinner, of course." Scorpius answered.
"But what is it?" Draco asked and sniffed the food.
"It's Chinese take out from this lovely restaurant in Soho; Barshu. Mum and I love this restaurant and Scorpius told me the two of you never eat Chinese food. We ordered the appetiser splatter, the boiled sea bass with sizzling chilli oil, deep fried lamb ribs with Sichuan pepper-salt, beef slices with spring onion, fragrant chicken in a pile of chillies and dry-fired asparagus. We thought it would be fun to share it." Rose explained and pointed at the dishes as she named them.
"As long as it compliments the Amarone della Valpolicella 2013 I picked for tonight I'm happy." Draco said and took a seat.
"I'm sure it will." Hermione smiled and gave Draco a peck in the cheek.
They started opening the food containers and Draco opened the bottle of wine serving everyone.
"Draco, we want to hear the story about how you saved mum and the others lives during the war." Rose said as they started eating.
"There really isn't much t tell." Draco mumbled.
"I don't understand that after all these years you still think that." Hermione said. "During the war Harry, Ron and I went into hiding. This is common knowledge, right?" she continued and Rose and Scorpius nodded.
"Well, what the books on the war doesn't tell you is that we were looking for something. Something that would help us to defeat Voldemort. I won't go into detail about what it was exactly. But we were traveling the country looking for it and clues where to find it. We'd just visited Xenophilius Lovegood and disapparated from his house into a forest when a gang of snatchers caught us." Hermione told Rose and Scorpius who were listening interested.
"What are snatchers?" Scorpius asked.
"The Ministry had a list of Undesirable, wizards and witches that were a threat. This included the Order of the Phoenix who fought against Voldemort, those who sympathised with Muggles, or blood traitors as they were called, and any Muggle-born who hadn't registered at the Muggle-Born Registration Commission. Naturally Hermione, Harry and Ron were on the list. I think actually Harry actually managed to stay Undesirable Nr 1 for about a year." Draco answered.
Hermione nodded and continued;
"When the snatchers caught us we gave them false names. But even though I cast a Stinging Jinx on Harry's face so they wouldn't recognise him they still suspected we were not who we said we were. That's why they decided to not bring us to the Ministry, but to Malfoy Manor."
Scorpius gave his father a worried look.
"They were greeted by my aunt Bellatrix Lestrange. Bella and my father strongly suspected that it was in fact Harry Potter who had been brought to them. They weren't sure however and they asked me to identify Harry." Draco said.
"But even though I know your father pressured you to identify us, you refused." Hermione said and squeezed his hand.
"It wasn't like I said 'I refuse to identify these people; I just said I don't know if it's him." Draco shrugged.
"But you did know it was us." Hermione said and gave him a kind smile.
"Of course I did. I'd recognise the three of you anywhere. I know we didn't get along back then, but I had no plans on letting the Dark Lord get to you. No one deserved that." said Draco honest.
"So you lied to protect mum, dad and uncle Harry?" Rose asked. "And this was right after Voldemort had threaten you and your family if you didn't murder Dumbledore?"
"Yes, this was about a year after that." Draco said.
"You don't seem to have had much of a happy childhood." Rose said and gave Draco a sympathetic look.
"Well, truer words never spoken, Rose. I had my fair share of setbacks." Draco chuckled.
"What happened next?" Scorpius asked. "Did they release you when dad wouldn't identify you?"
"I wish things would have panned out that way, but sadly no." Draco gave his son a sad smile. "Bellatrix noticed one of the snatchers had the sword of Gryffindor, which was supposed to be in her vault at Gringotts. She got mad at the snatchers and tossed them out. She was sure Hermione and the rest had broken into her vault and got scared they had taken something Voldemort had put there. She locked Harry and Ron in the cellar and tortured Hermione into telling her what else they had taken." Draco finished.
"Oh my! That's horrible!" Scorpius exclaimed with a shock on his face. "What did you do?" he asked his father.
Since Draco didn't answer his son right away Hermione spoke again,
"Draco couldn't do anything but watch it happen."
When she saw the looks both Rose and Scorpius gave Draco she continued;
"You two are lucky never to have experienced war, and I sincerely hope you never do. It's easy to know what you would have done when you sit here, at the dinner table while drinking wine with the comfort of you home and your loving family around you. But it's another thing entirely when you are isolated and fear for your life and actually put in the situation."
"Not a day goes by that I didn't wish I would have done something to stop it. " Draco said and gave Hermione a sincere look.
"What I just said goes for you too, Draco. Nothing you would have done would have changed the outcome, except for getting yourself killed. And nothing good would have come from that. I know you beat yourself up for not doing anything but now that you are here you forget what it was actually like. The Muggles call it survivor's guilt. It means a person feels guilty and thinks they did something wrong or didn't do enough when they survived something traumatic and others didn't. Thankfully I did survive but the experience was traumatic enough for you to feel guilty." Hermione said matter-of-factly. "I did see the look on your face as it happened, you know. I know it was torture for you too and that you wished you could have stopped it. But the truth is you couldn't." she added and gave Draco a sad smile.
Draco squeezed her hand again.
"I still feel rotten for just standing there. I could have chosen to help you." he said.
"But you did choose to help us. You lied to your father and aunt to protect us. A lie that could very well have cost you your life. That's what you chose do." Hermione said.
"You know that reminds me…" a voice from the door said.
The four at the table jumped in surprise and turned their heads. To their surprise Harry Potter entered the room.
"A very wise man once told me 'the world isn't split into good people and death eaters. We've all got light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we chose to act on. That's who we really are.'" Harry continued as he sat down by the table. "And I think you've proved by saving us time and again who you really are, Malfoy. Like when you gave me your wand as we escaped the Manor." he finished.
"I wouldn't say I gave it to you. You snatched it our of my hand." Draco said.
"Come on, we both know that if you didn't want me to get it I wouldn't have." Harry smiled.
"You make an excellent point, Potter. But if you don't mind me asking; what the bloody hell are you doing in my house on a Saturday night?" Draco asked with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
"I was actually just coming to drop off the books I borrowed from you on wandless magic." Harry said and dumped a pile of books on the dinner table.
"You didn't think this could have waited until Monday?" Draco sneered. "I think you're just curious to see how me asking Granger out went."
"And by the looks of it, it went well." Harry grinned even brighter. "What I didn't expect was finding you here as well, Rose."
"Well, it was a good and eventful weekend for the all the Granger women as it turned out." Rose grinned.
"As long as you are here, would you like some dinner?" Hermione offered.
"I would love that. What are we having?" Harry asked and summoned a plate, a wineglass and utensils from the kitchen.
"Take out from Barshu." Scorpius answered and handed Harry the lamb ribs.
"But lets talk about something more fun. I want to hear stories from your youth that didn't involve the war." Rose said.
Rose's request was not late to be for filled. Draco and Harry told stories from their battles in the Quidditch pitch. Hermione and Harry told, for the first time, the story from their second year of how they brewed Polyjuice Potion in the Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and in order to trick Draco into telling them about the Chamber of Secrets. Draco laughed so hard at the though of Harry and Ron impersonating Crabbe and Goyle his tears were running. Rose and Scorpius loved hearing stories from their parent's time at Hogwarts and their favourite was the one from the third year when Harry used his invisibility cloak to throw snowballs on Draco by the Shrieking Shack. Draco was in the middle of the story of how he fought against the savage beast hippogriff that nearly tore his arm off when Rose interrupted him;
"Hang on, I've heard this story before!" she said. "You're talking about Buckbeak, aren't you? When Hugo and I were young dad used to tell us the story about Buckbeak, the hero hippogriff that saved a wrongfully convicted man and humiliated the spoiled git." Rose continued.
Draco just stared at her in perplexity.
"Oi, the spoiled git was you, dad! Wasn't it?" Scorpius laughed.
"Damn Weasley, could never tell the story right." Draco muttered.
"What your dad didn't tell you was that it actually was your mother and me who freed Buckbeak from the executioner Mcnair, Lucius and the Minister Fudge." Harry said as he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.
"I knew it was you lot! It was always you!" Draco laughed.
"Well, this has been fun, but I better head back home now. See you lot tomorrow at King's Cross." Harry said begun heading out of the room.
"You got it. And after we've shipped our offspring off we can start poker night again." Draco said.
"Looking forward to it, and so is Ginny." Harry said.