Chapter 44
Draco sat in the room which Fleur had assigned him and the wandmaker, Ollivander at Shell Cottage. They had been at the cottage for over a day and Draco still had no grasp of how long they would be staying here.
Bill and Fleur had been so confused to see the entire lot of them, but had gladly made the room. There had been many questions first, but thankfully for Draco, they were all directed towards Harry. Hermione had been busy helping Fleur see to all the various injuries, before Draco had finally intervened and forced her to go rest. She had been brutally tortured by his aunt, a fact that made Draco feel increasingly guilty despite the fact that she insisted that he was the reason it hadn't been any worse. To his surprise, both Harry and Ron fully agreed.
He had not spoken to either of his Slytherin roommates other than a brief conversation earlier. Blaise and Theo were in another room and had very briefly told him that they would talk to him in a bit and that they needed some time to themselves for a little while.
In other words, they needed to confer and figure out if they trusted him after everything that had happened.
He wished it didn't have to be that way, but he understood. He had made his decision the moment he joined the Order and let them believe that he had completely gone over to the Death Eaters and to Voldemort. He had even allowed them to believe that he was dead, which was probably the worst of it all. Even though he had reconciled with his parents, his friends were there for him at a time when no one else had been.
Draco knew that he would be furious if either of them had done the same to him. He would have been so angry that they had let him down, but the anger would stem from the fact that he cared for the boys and their well-being. They were family, but he had let them down.
His thoughts were disrupted when he heard a knock at the door to his room. Draco scrambled out of his bed as he made his way towards the door. It was probably Hermione, who insisted that she comes see him after she had taken a small nap to treat him. While he mainly only had bruises and small cuts, she had insisted on a visit.
"Hermione, I told you that you should be resting-" Draco started as he opened the door, however it was not Hermione who was on the other side, but Blaise and Theo.
"I know we may not be the bella you were expecting, but we wanted to come and talk to you," Blaise said with a smirk.
Draco relaxed slightly at Blaise's all too familiar wit. If they were joking around with him, then they couldn't be too furious.
He stood aside from the door and gestured them into the room. "Come it," he said quietly.
The three of them stood awkwardly on the bed, none of them saying a word. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to start talking, or wait for them to begin.
"I'm-" Draco started.
"How did-" Blaise began.
"Why-" Theo said at the same time.
They all instantly stopped speaking to allow the others to continue, however none of them did. Blaise was the first to speak again.
"You go first," he said, gesturing for Draco to continue on with whatever he had started to say.
"I wanted to say that I was sorry. I had no right not to tell you anything about what I was doing. I should have trusted you more than I already did, and I'm sorry for how I treated both of you in my final months of school. We've been through so much together, and I let you guys down," he said softly.
Blaise and Theo looked at him understandingly.
"When did it start?" Theo asked him.
"With Harry," Draco said. Both boys raised their eyebrows at the lack of surname use, but did not say anything. "He first approached me and tried to convince me to give up whatever I was trying to do. I guess my behavior in the beginning of sixth year did not go unnoticed by him. He told me that I should go to Dumbledore and that I still have room for redemption."
"Did you?" Blaise asked him sceptically.
"Of course not," Draco scoffed. "But that was when something began to change. It wasn't Harry who had convinced me, and maybe Hermione knew that he wouldn't be successful, as she took over the task."
He thought back to when he found her crying in the classroom over Weasley and Lavender. It had been so long since that moment and so much had changed. But he knew that was when he began to question everything, really question. Before then it had been mere thoughts, which would later leave his mind and only be thought of in his lowest moments.
"She found me when I was at my lowest, most vulnerable moments. You know how before then I'd been questioning everything we'd learnt at children. My mother had written to me shortly before and told me to do whatever it took to survive. I don't know if she meant to join the Order, but at the Manor she didn't seem to object to my actions. And Severus had spoken to me as well. He was the first to have joined the Order. I'm a bit surprised that he never told the Dark Lord about my affiliations after proving his true colours, but maybe he saw no reason to sully the memories of the 'dead'," Draco said, pausing for a moment. "I think it was a combination of all of the following which lead me to accept when she asked me to join. But I doubt the same would have happened if either Ron or Harry had asked."
"Dumbledore was easier to talk to than I would have imagined. Of course he didn't trust me right away, and with good reason. I told him of my task, and he told me he would work on a solution. It wasn't until after the fight in Diagon Alley that I was even considered to be a part of the Order. I was told that no one could know that I switched sides as it would make it riskier," he said, looking down at the last part.
Theo nodded for him to continue.
"He told me about the plan he had arranged. I was to fake my death, and Dumbledore would have pretended to have killed me. It would have worked, however Severus proved to be loyal to the Dark Lord and not to Dumbledore," Draco said, before continuing on.
"I know now that I was wrong not to tell you guys, seeing how you both suffered despite my attempts to keep you as far away from it as possible and I only hope that you will forgive me," he said finally.
"Cut the Gryffindor sob act," Blaise said after a moment. "Seriously, you spend a few months with those lot and you're already acting like them," he said, not unkindly.
Theo nodded, "Honestly Draco, I think you need to spend a bit more time with us while we're here so we can whip you back into the Slytherin ways."
Draco grinned, knowing that this was his friends' way of forgiving him. "Right, like you pathetic bunch have any idea of what the 'Slytherin ways' truly are," he retorted back.
"There is one thing that I do have to ask, what's going on with you and the Golden Trio, especially Granger? When did you lot get so bloody chummy?" Theo asked him.
"I guess you can only spend so much time with someone without getting close to them. Harry and I argued for quite some time, but Hermione insisted we both get off out high horses and call a truce. Ron was another story; he refused to trust me and I refused to get on with him. I think a good reason was that I knew Hermione had feelings for him, and my proximity to her threatened him."
"And what is your relationship with Granger?" Blaise asked. "I doubt your mother misperceived about it."
Draco shook his head, "No, she was right. I don't even know when I got feelings for her. The first couple months everything was so jumbled. I was struggling to fight between what my parents had thought me and what I believed in. She got into my head and before I knew it, I couldn't stop thinking about her. I didn't do anything about it of course, I couldn't. I had no idea if she liked me. It took a fear of one of us dying for either of us to make a move."
"Merlin, you sound like a bird; all romantic and crap. Told you the bloody Gryffindors were rubbing off on you." Blaise teased him.
"Or at least a certain Gryffindor is," Theo said with a smirk.
Draco shook his head, "It's not like that with her. It's different, more pure. I can't get enough of her, but at the same time I want to make sure everything happens as she wants it to."
"So you haven't done it yet?" Blaise asked him dubiously. "In the time I've seen the two of you together it seems hard to believe, seeing how intimate you seem to be."
"No, and honestly, I don't feel the need to. The relationship we have right now is enough. That's not to say I wouldn't mind it being more, but like I said, it's whatever she wants."
"Sap." Blaise said in a joking manor.
Draco simply shrugged, knowing better than to deny it. However, he wanted to know more of his friends and what had happened in to them.
"So now that I've filled you in on what's happened with me, how about you guys share your tales as well?"
Theo was the first one to speak up. "I started receiving letters around the time of the Diagon Alley attack from the Dark Lord. I guess my father must have felt that I should be more a part of His missions and the Dark Lord agreed. Unlike with you, the Dark Lord didn't seem to care if I finished my education or not. He wanted me to join and there was nothing I could do. I didn't tell you because Blaise and I knew something was different after the Diagon Alley attack. We assumed that you must have accepted the ways of the Death Eaters because you seemed so reserved about it, so I couldn't tell you about my hesitation. And unlike you, I didn't have anyone to guide me to go to Dumbledore. So I did the only thing I could; I ran. I met up with Dirk Creswell shortly after, and before I knew it we had a large group with us," Theo said, pausing.
"I know," Draco said, causing both the boys to look up at him in surprise. "While we were in the woods, we saw your group. It was around the time when you were talking about Ginny Weasley's attempt to steal the Sword of Gryffindor."
"That was your group I heard?" Theo asked him. "When I heard the movement in the woods I had no idea who was there, and so we left."
"It's probably for the best anyways," Draco said. "I don't think a confrontation at that point would have been wise."
Theo nodded before continuing his story, "We were fine for a couple of months after that. None of us had ever mentioned the Dark Lord's name out of fear of him. But it was Dirk who tried to be brave and ended up saying his name. Unfortunately for him, he was killed, along with your uncle and a Goblin."
Draco looked down, "I liked Ted. I stayed with him last July and the entire family made me feel welcome. It was one of the first times I've had a family, biologically."
"Ted never mentioned it," Theo remarked. "But I get why. He probably wanted to protect you, like he did his wife and daughter."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Blaise said to Draco. "For both of your loss," he said, extending his sentiment to Theo as well.
They were all silent for a moment before Theo decided to go on.
"We were taken by the Snatchers to Malfoy Manor. I think it was because I was there that we were taken instead of sent to the Ministry. He wanted to make an example of me for those who ran away. I basically was a torture toy for any Death Eater who wanted to lash out. They could do anything, as long as it didn't kill me," Theo said, wincing at the memory. "This part probably ventures into Blaise's side of the story, but I'll tell the parts that are relevant to me. When Blaise saw me, he was a part of the Death Eaters. He was doing everything to seem loyal but when he saw us, he wanted to sneak us out. It was Bellatrix who caught us, and we were sent straight back to the dungeons."
Draco shuddered as he thought about the various tortures his friend had been put through. Being placed at the mercy of any single Death Eater was a horrid thing, but at all of their disposal? It was a miracle he was still alive.
Blaise took this as a good opportunity to tell his story, wanting to try and get Theo not to think of his pain.
"It was around the middle of summer when I began receiving the letters. The Dark Lord was not pleased by the fact that Theo had escaped from his grasp, and that you, Draco, were supposedly dead. He needed a younger generation to be groomed for when his current followers were too old to continue to support him. I ignored them of course, so he decided to change his antics. He threatened the life of my mother, and I didn't think I had a choice but to join. I went to Diagon Alley to tell my mother about my decision, but on the way I met Lovegood. Without knowing, she showed me that if I tried to protect my mother by joining up, it might not be the best for her. And she swayed me to put it off," Blaise said, as he remembered the moment.
"Although the Dark Lord seemed to be closer to my Mother than I had originally thought. He told me that I could join willingly and he'd spare my mother, or that he would kill my mother, then Imperious me. I didn't see any other options, so I joined. I pretended to be loyal and did all that he asked. However I also passed information back to McGonagall whenever I could."
"But then they brought in Lovegood, and I knew something had to change. It wasn't until I saw Theo that I began to plot something. I planned to sneak them all out by pretending to want to torture Theo and disillusion the rest of them. But Bellatrix caught on, and she told the Dark Lord. They were all sent back to the dungeons, but he kept me around. He told me I'd gone back on the bargain and that there would be severe consequences for my actions. He made me watch as he commanded Bellatrix to kill my mother. She was whimpering and weeping the entire time, begging me to help her, but I couldn't. The Imperious curse had already been placed on me," he said, his eyes darkening at the memory. "I couldn't do a damn thing as he killed her. She was my only family, and now she's gone."
"I'm sorry, Blaise," Draco said. He had met his friend's mother on several occasions. She had always been so full of life and had always without fail welcomed him into her home. She was a second mother to him, and he would miss her dearly.
"Me too. If it weren't for me then she may still have been alive," Theo said sadly. "I'm sorry that you had to choose to risk everything for a failed attempt to save me."
"Don't blame yourself, Theo," Blaise said. "As much as I wanted to get you out, I also wanted Lovegood out as well. I probably would have done what I did regardless of your presence. I know my mother would be proud thatI was trying to do what I believed in, despite the consequences."
"Nice to know you care so much about me," Theo joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Draco smirked. "What's going on with you and the Lovegood bird anyways? You've mentioned her a lot more than you have any other person. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you fancied her." Draco searched his friend's face before realization dawned upon his face. "You do, don't you? You actually care for her."
"No…Well yes…I don't know, maybe," Blaise confessed. "There's something different about her. I know everyone thinks she's crazy, and maybe she is a bit loony, but there's more to her, you know? She's genuine and I can't help but feel relaxed around her."
"Well what better time to get to know her than now? We're all here together for at least a little while, and you might as well take the chance to get to know each other better," Draco said. Oh Merlin, his friends were right, he was turning into a sap. But Draco wouldn't give any of it back. He needed Hermione as much as he loved her.
"Great, if you get in a relationship too, Blaise, I'll be left all alone," Theo grumbled lightly, causing his friends to laugh at him.
They continued to laugh and reminisce together, and eventually Draco felt that they were all good once more. The rest of the afternoon was spent as such until Fleur called them down for dinner. While he enjoyed the company of his new friends, there would never be anything like the friendship Blaise, Theo, and Draco had shared and Draco was glad to have them back.
A/N: I know this chapter served mainly as a recap chapter, but I wanted there to be a good bonding chance between the trio. They've each suffered so much and they needed to be able to talk about it. I never actually got to write about Blaise's mother either, so this served as a good chance to actually state clearly what happened to her. On top of that, it's been a while since some of these events have happened and I wanted to allow a chance to recap them.
In other news, I'm going on a vacation later this week and won't be back until Tuesday. I may be able to upload the chapter on Sunday if I have wifi off of my phone, but if not it should be up at the latest on Tuesday.
Thanks to all of you for your continuous support and your reviews. I really love hearing from all of you lovely people and every review makes me smile. See you all real soon!