Chapter 22
Draco had, at first, not wanted to go to the headmaster's office when he had been told to go. He felt, just as all of his friends felt, that his place was with Harry. Even if he would not know that he had left him, then Draco would know it.
But when the headmaster insisted that he was to go with him he had conceded. He was sure Dumbledore would not pull him from the side of his best friends unless it was important.
By the time he got to the office, he was sure it was for something important.
And by the time he walked into it he was overjoyed that he had come to get him.
"Dad – " that had been more than he had been expecting.
He had thought about Lucius all night until he had got to be with Harry – yet not even then had the only parent he had ever had been distracted from his thoughts completely.
When he had known he was going out on his own and he was going to risk everything.
He had been so proud of his dad. But he was even more proud of him now he saw him looking exhausted and as if he had been to hell and back – but as if he would do it all again if he had too.
He wondered if another father would have made him doubt after all he had been through that night. He had been loyal to the Dark Lord once and that meant that he was going to be able to loyal to him again. But as he looked in to the grey eyes of his he knew he was loyal to him and he was always going to be so.
Always.
"Dragon," the childhood nickname could at times be an annoyance for Draco now he had grown out of it, but for that night at least he was going to let it slide. He had to give his father his moment.
Within a moments, Lucius had crossed the floor and he had his son in his arms.
He did not want to think what Cedric Diggory's father was going to be going through that night. He remembered the way he had felt when he had been at World Cup and he had seen that muggle boy and his father get tortured. Well, that had been nothing on what he had had to see that night.
"Dad, are you ok? Dad, are you hurt?" Draco asked.
He did not think he had been ok in a long time now he came to think about it. And he had been hurt that night. But that was not the sort of thing you told your panicking teenage son.
"I am fine," he said as he kissed his forehead. "Draco sit down – I do not think the two of us have got a lot of time."
The son did as his father told him even though he did not like what he was being told a lot. Draco was all but on the verge of asking him to stay the night with him. Stay at Hogwarts safe.
"I know you have been told Voldemort is back. Draco, everything is going to change now. For all of us."
"In what ways?"
"We are not going to get to be together as much as we have over the past couple of years. And I know this is not what you what to hear but you can send no message to me. I mean none now unless it is done through word of mouth."
"I cannot write to you at all?"
"Not unless it is extremely formal or well coded. Son, the danger it too great."
"But he cannot be that strong yet surely?"
"No – but it is not going to stay that way for long. With every second that passes Draco, he will get stronger. We have to combat that."
He knew the from the look in his father's eyes he was not going to change his mind.
"My son, I have no time – but to tell you that we were right. You are not going to be able to come home, not this summer at least."
"Is it not going to be more dangerous for you if I am not there? How are you going to explain my absence?"
"You are, in the eyes of my so called comrades, a disloyal son of a disappointed father. It is not going to stretch belief that you want to spend the summer with your aunt and uncle."
"When in fact I am going to be."
"I cannot say for sure yet, but you will be with Jane wherever you go. Speaking of going... so must I."
"But you have not given me an account of the night yet. You have not told me what went on."
"And nor do I ever intend to. You are going to get a few horrible memories of your own without burdening you with my own," Lucius mused as he leant forward and kissed his son forehead. "I am sorry my prince but I have to go now."
"So when am I going to get to see you again?"
"It is hard to say. I shall try to come over the first week of summer but it is not going to be so easy anymore."
"But you are going to be there to pick me up, aren't you? You always pick me up from school. Always."
Draco could hear what a child he sounded. And he did not mean to be so young when he was meant to be being so brave but –
Lucius sadly shook his head. He did not mean to disappoint him. And if he as honest there was nothing he wanted more in the world than to met his son on that platform when he came back for the summer.
But the days of peace were gone. The sooner the two of them got used to that, then the easier it was going to be in the end.
"No. No, I am not son. This is a new world. You have to meet it as bravely as you can, my sweet boy," his father sighed as he kissed his forehead before swiftly leaving the room.
Draco knew it was ridiculous but he felt as if his father was leaving not only him – but his life. Well, certainly his life as he knew it.
Soon enough he was not going to know anything - he was not going to recognise much.
Left in the head masters office a voice in his head told him he had to go soon. He was sure the old wizard was going to need his office. He had a lot of work to do after all. And he had to get back to Harry, Ron and Hermione. They were going to be a constant in his life and he knew he should be at their side.
But for now he felt as if his feet were stuck to the ground. He felt as if he had to take a moment to be on his own.
It felt as if his father had gone as quickly as he had come. He did not know if he would rather he had not come at all if he was just going to steal himself away so soon again.
"The world is a very different place to the one we all woke up to this morning," he heard a voice behind him.
Draco could count on one hand the amount of times he had ever had a one on one conversation with the head master and he was not entirely comfortable doing so even then.
He could only nod in response.
"My father..."
"Has found his courage – just as you and your friend's have found yours a whole magnitude of time over the years," he said as he walked about his desk and sat down.
"But – he... I did not understand that he was going to – I didn't get how real it was going to feel. He is not going to safe until it is over, is he? There won't be one night when I am not wondering if he is safe."
"No. There will not."
Draco nodded. Then there was nothing left to say.
XXX
By the time that Draco returned to the hospital wing, the majority of the Weasley's were asleep. The emotion and the exhaustion of the evening had got to them.
But Hermione was wide awake.
"Are you ok? What did Professor Dumbledore want?" she asked.
Draco sat by her side. "I saw my dad. He looked like hell."
She nodded. "Was he ok?"
"He didn't say. I do not know what to - "
Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around him. "Whatever comes – we are all going to be together throughout the next few years." He nodded. "You know I am not going to let you face any of this on your own. We are always going to have each other."
Turning to her, he looked at her with big grey eyes. "This is not a very romantic setting."
"I know it is not – but – I, Draco, I think that I love you. I know that I love you."
A smile, in spite of everything crept across his face.
"I love you too."
If they had been anywhere else on any other day then he was sure as hell that he would have leaned into kiss her. That would have been a perfect moment. And he wanted to once be something which was perfect in his life.
But he didn't get perfect.
Ever.
And so they just sat there together in silence and saw the night through.
XXX
Theodore Nott watched as Draco Malfoy walked down to the dungeons. The two boys met one another's eyes – but Draco knew there was something different. Had he been the boy he was meant to be the day he had been born he wondered how his life would have turned out.
What he would know that he did not then and how much his father was going to be able to tell him. He was sure as hell it was going to be more than the nothing he knew then.
Draco gave a respectful nod. When he had been younger they had tried to be friends with the Slytherin – and he sure as hell hoped there was going to be something in them which was going to pull them out the other side of what they were no doubt all going through then. And on the right side of it all.
But he did not know if he was able to call them his friends anymore. Not now.
"How are you Theodore?"
He always knew that his peer had something good in him. Theodore was not Pansy or Greg or Vincent. He had a mind of his own and he was not going to be over taken by any one Draco had a feeling.
But he was not on his own. As Pansy came in to the corridor, she had smirk on her face.
"It is time to choice side Draco. Theodore is fine for he has chosen the right side. It is time for you to do the same."
"I already have done," he said as he went on his way to find his uncle.
Severus was not in his apartments though. He was gone.
Everything is going to change... and he is going to busy a lot more often, realised Draco.
He had always leant on those he loved. But now it was time to stand alone.
XXX
"Grimmuald Place?" Jane asked as she sat in the sofa in the living room, Max at her feet.
"Yes – it was the childhood home of some of Mrs Malfoy's relations. Sirius is now opening it back up," Lucius sighed as she looked at him intently. "Not to the public of course, but to the Order."
"Sirius Black?"
"He is an innocent man," Lucius shrugged, though it did make him miserable to think of her and his son living together with a man such as that. He knew no doubt Sirius would think the same of him though...
"He is – I do not even know him," she said as she put her head in her hands.
When he had returned from that night to her, she had been the one to take him in her arms. It had been an instinct to her.
But since then he had been so shut off from her. She had almost expected it she guessed. He had gone through something awful. And she could not expect him to be as he was –
Lucius tried to reassure her. "I know you do not - you don't even have to get to know him if you do not wish. All you have to do is live in his safe house."
She nodded. A million protests were in her month – but she would not let them out. He had been through enough.
"Safe is going to be the key word in this family from now on isn't it?"
"I am afraid so."
"But we are going to see you there over the summer, aren't we? The three of us are not going to be torn from one another completely?" she said as she took a deep breath.
She had been told for years she was part of their family and she had had such a hard time coming to terms with the idea they had accepted her as she was. She had been so tentative at crossing the gap between them.
But the truth was she did not think she had ever felt the ties of kinship that pulled them together as much as she did then.
"You will see me Jane, both of you. That I will swear. But it is not going to be a lot. Not in comparison to the past."
"Well then..." she sighed as she took in his face. There had been enough mourning for what they had both lost she thought. They had to keep going. Just as they had always kept going. In the face of Maria, and the face of the chamber.
And everything else.
"I had better go and get packing." She got up and left the room, leaving the ashen faced Malfoy alone.
All the time, his mark burned him. He was not always being summoned. In fact, it seemed to him as if he rarely was.
But he was always being reminded.
You do not belong to your son. You do not belong to your family. You belong to me.
XXX
It took Harry days before he begun to talk to his friends over what he had been through that night, that night when he had been through so much. He had told Dumbledore. And for a time, that was enough. The fact that he could be with his friends in peace was enough.
"I do not know how he is getting any asleep at night," Hermione said to Draco one day as the two of them took a walk about the lake, Harry and Ron watching from under a tree not so very far away.
"Well, I should think the potions help. And the certainty of what has happened. There is no more indecision. No more waiting."
"You speak for yourself I think."
"Perhaps," he shrugged with a nod.
The two of them lapsed into silence for a while. "I am going to get to see you over the summer, aren't I?" she asked at Draco quietly.
He shrugged. "I hope so." But he did not think he was able to say for sure. In fact, he knew he was not. He did not even know where he was going to be spending the summer. "I got a letter from Jane. She said she is going to meet me at the train station and then we will go on to our summer home from there. But I do not think she is talking about the chateaux."
"You poor little rich boy," she said lightly as she took his arm.
He smiled and was more than able to appreciate where she had been coming from in that moment – he heard how pathetic he had sounded.
By the time that the two of them had made it all the way round they found that Harry and Ron were sitting in a comfortable silence. It did not take the two of them to join them in it.
Harry had a far off look in his eyes. Hermione did not know what he was thinking and she did not ask. Whether it be the meetings he had had to endure with the parents of Cedric Diggory or whatever he had had to go through that night, it would be devastating. And it was also very private.
Draco thought of the year before. It had been about this time that he had been sitting pretty much in that spot kicking himself because somehow Wormtail had got free.
It seemed as if that was small time now.
And she could not help wondering, had one of those things not happened... would that have affected another?
Was there some small way they could have stopped this from happening altogether?
Xxx
Draco did not even bother to keep in trunk in some kind of order as he threw his school things in. Everything seemed of such little important now. And he knew he was a fool mood.
Putting his wand back in his clock pocket, he knew he would not pack that away until he was back into the safe house he knew he was being taken to the summer, wherever it was going to be. How he longed for the day when he was going to be allowed to perform magic outside of Hogwarts.
There was suddenly a knock on the door and he turned round to find it was his date to the Yule ball, Luna Lovegood.
"Have you seen any shoes?" she asked him.
"I am afraid I have not," he said to her with pity on his face. Bastards. He did need to ask why this had happened – or why it had done so to her.
Why couldn't they just treat her with a bit of respect?
His anger was soon written on his face.
"It is all right you know, Draco. They are going to turn up in the end."
"But it is not ok. They are your things and they should not be hidden from you. Not when they belong to you," he said before putting his head in his hands. .
As he sat down on the bed, she saw the opportunity to do the same. He needed a friend.
"How is Harry?" she asked him gently. Though she had spoken to him once or twice over the school year, the two of them were not close. She was barely going to go up to him and ask that question.
It was far better that she went round the back was as it was.
"He is - he is Harry. And he is coping as he always has when something has gone wrong for him. He is not angry -or if he is he has not shown it yet."
"He'll come through. As long as he has his friends, he is going to come through. Draco, I know this war is going to be a terrible thing. But remember that what happened – it has already happened a week ago."
"I do not see how much of a difference that makes at this point."
"Well, you see we have lived seven days through the war – and that means we're seven days closer to it ending."
XXX
The ride back to the station was subdued. Harry never ever wanted to go back to his relatives, not even when he had had the best year at school, not that he had ever had one without something going wrong. Now, not only was he going back to the Dursley's after he had seen one of his school friends horrifically killed, but he was doing it in the full knowledge that the only person in the world who should be his guardian was on the run still. And desperately worried about him.
"We'll see Sirius soon," Hermione said to him as they rode along but Harry kept looking out of the window – and loving for a different life.
It was in the end Ron who brought him out of himself. Exploding snap solves all, mused Hermione.
With a smile, stepping out of the carriage to go and find the sweet trolley and get some fresh air, Draco was surprised to find he was being followed.
Or not.
"You are going to write to me this summer?" he heard a soft voice behind him.
"Hermione – when have I ever not written to you?" he asked with a raised eye brow.
"After our first year."
"That was not really my fault."
The two of them smiled at the old memory. They had come so far together even if it felt like they had not moved at all some days. Reaching for his hand, she sighed. "I'll miss you. Till we're back together," she muttered before she leant up and kissed him know the cheek – or at least she would have done, if he had not turned at the last moment, causing their lips to met.
The two went back to the carriage and said nothing more about it, merely exchanging secret smile now and again.
For now, it was enough.
They got to Kings Cross and Ron was the first to locate his flamed hair mother. Not so far away from him, for the first time on the collection run from Hogwarts, stood his old governess.
Jane had thinned out further from when he had seen her at Easter and she had bags under her eyes. She looked like a women with the weight of the world on her shoulders. She looked as old as his father despite the decade they had between them.
But he was touched to see her look a little younger when she saw him. A smile spread over the tired features which he had grown up with and she looked not old, not young – but just like his Jane.
Making his way over to her, he forgot there was anyone else in the world at that moment, and there, at Kings Cross, the two of them shared the biggest embrace they ever had.
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