Chapter 11
At breakfast the morning after Halloween, Draco finally got a letter from his mother. It was very short – she said she was doing fine, that he shouldn't worry about her but focus on his schoolwork instead. He had been hoping for more, but at least it was her own handwriting and apart from the briefness there was nothing to indicate that she was not well. He read it several times throughout the day and was distracted enough during meals that he didn't actually see Potter until after lunch outside the Potions classroom. When he and the other Slytherins arrived, the hallway was already full of Gryffindors. Apparently Slughorn hadn't shown up yet, and the classroom was locked. Potter was standing on the edge of a group and not participating in their conversation. He looked thoroughly annoyed, and Draco sidled up to him.
"What's wrong, Potter?" he asked in his usual drawl.
The other boy looked disoriented for a second, and Draco could feel it too: the ground shifting beneath them. Then Potter's frown deepened and Draco felt the thrill of victory.
"People noticed I wasn't there yesterday. They keep quoting the speeches at me."
"They've been quoting them in Slytherin too."
Potter groaned.
"I don't want to hear what you've heard," he said.
But before he could start repeating some of the wonderfully sappy quotes he had picked up, Slughorn showed up and pushed his way past the students, apologizing and rambling about how he got held up in the teacher's lounge. Potter trickled inside with the other Gryffindors, and then Pansy was at his side.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Oh nothing, I'm just having a friendly conversation with Potter in front of half the students in our year," he said, not even trying to suppress his smirk.
She didn't look halfway as impressed as he thought she ought to.
"What are you playing at?" she asked suspiciously.
"Nothing," he said with a shrug.
"It didn't look particularly friendly to me."
"It was," he said as they entered the classroom.
He began setting up his cauldron, ignoring her further attempts at interrogating him.
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Since it was Gryffindor and Slytherin who had Potions together and Slughorn wasn't the sort of teacher who made seating arrangements, the students had neatly split in half creating two sections in the classroom: one of green and one of red. This meant that Harry's table was by the opposite wall of Malfoy's, where he was setting up his cauldron next to Ron and Hermione. Neville and Ginny had taken the space in front of them – he still found it odd that she had classes with them now.
"Hey, what did Malfoy want?" she asked.
"What?"
"I saw him talking to you outside."
Harry shrugged.
"I don't know, he wanted to quote the stupid speeches at me or something."
"Really? He still gets off on bothering you?"
She looked over towards the Slytherins.
"He is such a child," she said.
"I think he's a little better this year," said Harry.
Ron made a choking sound.
"Yeah, right," said Ginny, turning back to her own table as Slughorn began explaining the theory behind brewing the advanced antidote to the curses they had read about in their homework.
Ron's eyes already had a glazed look. Harry leaned closer to him.
"Hey, do you maybe want to go flying tonight," he whispered.
"For quidditch practice? Isn't twice a week fine?"
"No, I meant just flying. We could go over the forest or try to make it to the mountains?"
"Uh, I don't know. I sort of wanted to spend some time with Hermione tonight, and she doesn't like flying, so I doubt she'll want to come. Maybe some other night?"
"Sure."
"Potter and Weasley, would you mind being quiet?" said Slughorn loudly. "This is a very delicate and advanced potion, and it is not one you would want to mess up on. Now, when you slice the ginger root-"
Harry inadvertently glanced towards the Slytherin half of the classroom when he was reprimanded. Malfoy was smirking at his notes, and then as if he felt Harry's eyes on him, looked up at him for a second with a flash of teeth. Harry turned away and tried to focus his attention on the rest of Slughorns walkthrough of the potion.
"…sadly we only have dried petals of monkshood, where usually the fresh ones are preferred. Now the dried ones are just as effective, but it is critically important that you use exactly seven petals and it is a lot easier to tell if they are intact or if some have been crumpled into each other when they are fresh than when dry, so be extremely careful. That is all, so come up here and gather your ingredients, and let us get started."
"They should at least give us the right ingredients," said Ron as he and Harry stood up. "It isn't fair if it's more difficult than it's supposed to be."
"I can help you pick out the petals if you want me to," said Neville. "I've been drying monkshood down in the greenhouses for a project, so I know how it's supposed to look."
"Sure! Thanks Neville."
Neville shrugged. There were too many students crowding around the tables with ingredients for them to reach it, so they waited in the back for some of the others to finish up.
"Tell me again, how it was you suddenly became good at Potions after sucking worse than I did?" said Ron.
"Well," said Ginny earnestly, "first Professor Snape died…"
Neville cut her off.
"I found out out that a lot of it is Herbology. It just means I can figure out the ingredients, I still mess up the on rest."
"Still, if the room of requirement hadn't burned down, I would have accused you of having rediscovered Harry's book of wonder from sixth year."
Harry slipped between two students in front of him, reaching the table but getting out of earshot of his friends. He picked up two of the shiny, green beetles from a big jar on the table.
"Those are females. The males have antennae – really, Potter, such a big mistake and you haven't even started on the potion yet. One might think you didn't listen when the professor was going over the instructions."
"Shut up," he said to Malfoy and replaced his two antennae-less beetles.
"What could have been distracting you?" the other boy continued unabashedly. "Did Weasley reject your marriage proposal? You looked awfully disappointed for a moment, but you shouldn't worry, you can always go back to dating the female specimen, she does resemble her brothers quite a lot anyway."
"That's not even a good insult," said Harry.
Malfoy picked up a handful of the dried, purple flowerheads, which was apparently the last ingredient he was missing.
"I'll try to think of something better, then," he said and slipped away, another Slytherin quickly taking over his spot by the table.
"Harry, will you pass me the monkshood?" said a soft voice right next to him, and he started.
Hermione was standing by his shoulder, so close he could only see the top of her head when he looked down. She was sifting through the beetles, her face hidden under her poofy, dark curls.
"I didn't notice you," he said and grabbed a handful of flowers for her.
"Thanks," she said without looking at him.
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After Potions they had Advanced Magical Theory for their next class. Harry realized something was wrong when Hermione still hadn't looked at him the entire lesson. He also had an uncomfortable feeling he knew what it was. He told himself he wasn't avoiding her when he followed Dean and Seamus down to the pitch to play a bit of practice quidditch with some of the Hufflepuffs. And since he went back to the dining hall with them when they were done playing, it only made sense that he sat with them during the meal. And because she was hanging out with Ron all evening anyway, he went down to the study area on the third floor to do homework rather than staying up in the common room. He didn't return to the tower until late, and he thought it was empty until he was halfway across the room and she stood up from her chair by the fireplace.
"Harry," she said, and he stopped.
She spoke quietly, but it still felt like an ambush.
"Hi – I thought you'd have all gone to bed by now?" he said and tried not to sound accusatory.
Maybe he was wrong, maybe there was nothing to worry about.
"I've been thinking," she said. "I need to talk to you."
"Now? I'm kind of tired."
"Yes, I think now would be a really good time."
It was an ambush and she wasn't about to let him go now that she had cornered him.
"Okay, sure," he said.
He sank into an armchair by the fireplace. She sat down across form him and looked at him with an expression of mixed concern and sternness that reminded him of McGonagall.
"What's going on with you and Malfoy?" she asked.
He had been hoping until the last second that he had been wrong and she really wanted to talk about something other than that.
"Nothing," he said. "Why would you ask that?"
She sighed.
"Please don't do this, Harry. I heard how you talked to each other in Potions. And to be honest, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything weird about it, if Padma hadn't told me that she saw you and him meeting down on the quidditch pitch last night, when you had told us you were going flying by yourself."
He didn't want to have this conversation with her.
"We're just talking," he said. "I've been talking to him. I'm trying to figure him out."
"Why?"
"Because – it's like what we talked about, right? How it was weird that he was still here after all that happened, and the war and his trial and everything. I didn't like that we still ran into him. But, I mean, I didn't even know him, it was just this old thing from when we were 11 or something, and it seemed so stupid."
"What are you talking about? He is here. We have to go to school with him, but we don't have to deal with him."
He looked into the fireplace where the embers were still glowing softly red.
"He was a Death Eater! You can't just forgive him for that and become friends with him, or whatever it is you're doing."
"Why not? You were the one defending him the last time we talked about this. You brought up the Wizengamot-decision. You seemed all for forgiving him back then."
"That was different – that was completely different."
"How was it different?"
"Because we were discussing his right to go to school! It was an entirely different issue, and I haven't changed my opinion on that: I don't think he should be in Azkaban and I think he has a right to finish his education and take his exams. I think he deserves to be forgiven by the school and by the court, but not by us. He doesn't deserve our forgiveness and he definitely doesn't deserve yours."
"You've been telling me that I was wrong about him for years. Every time I thought he was up to something you said I was overreacting. And most of the time you were right."
"I was wrong, Harry. 6th year, when it mattered, you were right and I was wrong."
"It's more complicated than that," he said.
"But it isn't!"
She took a deep breath and seemed to steady herself.
"Listen," she said more calmly now. "I don't like Malfoy, I never have, but normally I would have congratulated you on deciding to get over the stupid grudge you have against him and be more mature. I wouldn't have the energy for fighting with him every day for 7 years either."
"But you're not congratulating me."
"No. I'm not. He isn't just some mean, spoiled brat anymore; he is emotionally amputated – no, listen to me! He became a Death Eater when he was sixteen and he attempted murder several times. He watched completely unaffected when Bellatrix tortured me. She did that for a really long time."
"Look, I'm sorry, Hermione. We could hear you screaming, Ron was going crazy downstairs and-"
She cut him off:
"That's not the point, I'm not blaming you, I know you did everything you could. The point is, that he just stood there and he didn't care because he had been practicing the cruciatus curse on first years the whole year, and living in that house he had probably seen it a hundred times before, so he didn't even care. Even if it wasn't all his fault everything that happened, that doesn't matter. He still did those things and there is nothing left in him that's worth saving or forgiving."
"How do you know that?
"Maybe I don't," she said, and the last bit of patience had left her voice. "But sometimes forgiveness isn't good. I don't think you're stuck up or self-righteous, and a lot of the time your judgment is right and I know you're a good person, but you have no nuance. You can't see people or actions or history with any gradation and you always think you're right – like how you still can't see anything wrong with Dumbledore after everything he put us through."
Harry opened his mouth but she cut him of again before he could say anything.
"I know. We've talked about this, you saw him before you came back and that made you forgive him. Maybe I will too someday. But then you've been defending Snape all year – I understand that you want to acknowledge his redeeming qualities, but why do you have to turn him into a hero? Have you seen how Neville looks at you when you do that? We weren't even here 7th year, so you can't just come waltzing in and declare that Snape was a hero and be so vocal about it, because you have a lot of influence and what you say matters, and you hurt people when you put him on a pedestal like that! Your forgiveness is not a good thing! You don't even listen to Neville or Seamus or Luna or even Ginny when they try to tell you what it was like and how he let it all happen, you just insist that because he died a martyr death their experiences don't matter. You are way too prone to forgiving people. And Malfoy doesn't deserve it."
"Aren't you the one who's lacking nuance right now?" he said.
For a second it looked like she was about to cry with frustration.
"Why do you even want to be friends with him? You hardly talk to us anymore, and I don't know why. After the war-"
"I don't know! Maybe I just like talking to him, and maybe I want to do that without having to think about how that affects everyone's feelings. Why does everything have to be about the war?"
"It is for me!"
She was crying now.
"It is for me," she repeated quietly. "It won't go away. It's just there, all the time. Everything I do and think and worry about. I'm still scared. I'm still going over all the details in my mind. I keep making up ways we could have saved people if we had done something different, and I hate that. I wish I could stop doing that."
He didn't say anything. She wiped at the tears, not looking at him, her mouth stretched in an apologetic grin.
"It's so stupid. I just thought it was like that for everyone else too. I'm just trying to-"
She shook her head.
"Hermione…"
She sniffed and stood up.
"Sorry, you said you were tired. I'm going to go to bed."
She picked up her books from the floor.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then," she said.
She didn't wait for an answer, but walked quickly to the steps to the girl's dormitories and disappeared upstairs without looking back at him. Harry didn't move. He sat motionless in his chair and stared into the embers. The common room was completely quiet. He ran his hands over his face and stood up. He walked slowly up the stairs to his dormitory and collapsed on his bed.