Chapter 22

He didn't want to repeat his mistake from before the holidays and try to get a hold of Potter when he was with his friends. At least after the episode in the astronomy tower, Draco hadn't been in the wrong, no matter how angry Potter had been. This time he didn't think Potter would tell his friends to leave them alone if Draco approached them. He probably wouldn't even interfere if they tried to curse him. And when once it seemed that all he ever did was run into Potter, he now never saw him on his own. He was always surrounded by a group of friends or flanked by Granger and at least one Weasley.

Draco managed to slip him a note during one of their potions lessons, but Potter threw it away without even looking at it. There was no chance he could make him listen, not even for long enough to attempt an apology. He waited anxiously for his chance but it didn't come, and the sense of urgency that had resided in him ever since he left McGonagall's office that evening did not help his patience. So he decided to do something stupid.

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They were brewing skelegro in Potions, and as with most healing draughts it was a very complicated process. The lesson had even been extended, as they would not have been able to finish within the timespan of a normal lesson. Draco was almost as good with healing potions as with antidotes, so he allowed himself to also keep an eye on Potter across the classroom. Judging from the look of hard concentration on his face, he was struggling more than Draco.

He waited until the lesson was almost over. His own potion was looking perfect, and he thought Potter looked satisfied as well. There was only about ten minutes left until they would be asked to turn their potions in and clean up, when Draco left his station and sauntered over to the Gryffindor half of the classroom. He could pretend he was just on his way to get a glass vial for his own potion, but it wasn't really important. It wasn't like he wanted to get away with it.

Potter was leaning over his potions textbook, frowning at the instructions. He didn't even notice when Draco passed his station.

He jumped when he heard the crash. He stared at the cauldron where it had fallen over the edge of the table, the potion that had spilled everywhere and the purple fumes rising from the sizzling liquid. Potter raised his eyes from the mess, slowly, and looked at Draco. Draco stared back at him.

"Oops," he said with a smirk. "Sorry about that."

And that was enough. Potter grabbed his wand from the table and flung a wordless curse at Draco.

"Protego!"

Draco was just as fast, he had kept his wand ready and the spell bounced off, but Potter was already stepping over the shiny black puddle on the floor. He grabbed Draco's collar and pushed him backwards, rage in his eyes, curses on his lips and his wandpoint inches from Draco's face. Everyone in the room had to be watching them, but no one intervened, and for just a second real fear gripped him, because Potter was furious and Draco had no idea what he might do.

"Expelliarmus!" sounded professor Slughorn's voice, and Potter's wand was snatched away.

"Expelliarmus!" and Draco's own wand flew from his grip.

"Potter! What on earth do you think you're doing? – let him go immediately."

There was a second of hesitation before Potter released Draco's shirt and stepped back. He did not take his eyes off him.

"Fifteen points from both of your houses. Duelling in a potions classroom, are you absolutely mad? I will see you both back here this evening for detention. And clean that mess up. You can pick up your wands after class."

"How do you expect us to clean up without our wands?" asked Draco.

He heard Potter scoff.

"Maybe one of the Gryffindors will tell you if you ask them nicely," said the professor.

Potter glared murderously at him, but unless he actually managed to kill Draco before this evening, things had worked out perfectly. The force of Potter's anger had surprised him, but it had gotten them into detention and that was the important part. It probably wouldn't be easier to get him to accept an apology after this, but at least he would finally get to talk to him in privacy, and a detention would give him enough time to explain everything he needed to.

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Harry was still seething with anger when they left potions. He and Malfoy had cleaned up without saying a word to each other. Ron and Hermione waited for him and he left the dungeon with them.

"I can't believe he did that," said Hermione. "It was completely pointless."

"Yeah, well he's a sadistic bastard. He doesn't need a reason to do anything," growled Harry.

"It wasn't very smart of you to start throwing curses at him though. Not in the potions classroom."

"I would have done the same," said Ron.

Hermione shrugged.

"It's not like you're famous for controlling your temper either."

"But did you see how he was just laughing at it? He didn't even pretend it was an accident!"

"At least Slughorn said you could spend your detention remaking your potion, so you'll still have something to turn in," said Hermione.

"I won't be able to brew anything in the same room as that evil git."

"So does that mean you're done being friends with him?"

Ron made a choking sound.

"What?" he said.

Harry shot Hermione and angry look, but she just shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm done," he said.

"Wait, will one of you explain that? When was Harry ever friends with Malfoy?" asked Ron again, looking confused.

"I wasn't," said Harry. "We just talked a bit before the holidays. I thought he might have changed. I know, it's ridiculous, you don't have to tell me. But you should have seen him at his trial… I don't know, it seemed possible. But I was wrong."

"Why didn't I know about that?"

"I didn't tell anyone. I was just testing to see if I was right, and I wasn't. It's not like it was anything important, I would have told you if I thought it mattered."

"You told Hermione."

"I saw them and asked Harry about it. He asked me not to tell anyone."

"But-"

Harry cut him off.

"Look, it doesn't matter," he said. "Can we talk about something else? I have to spend the whole evening in detention with the idiot, so I think I have been punished enough."

They changed the subject, and he was thankful for it. He had no idea why Malfoy had suddenly turned on him and reverted back to his old self, it seemed to have come out of nowhere. But right then having to admit his mistake, a mistake that should have been so obvious, was much worse than any of Malfoy's insults.

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When Harry arrived at the potions classroom that evening, Malfoy was already there. He stood in the dimly lit corridor, leaning against the wall. He looked up when he heard Harry approaching.

"He isn't here yet," he informed him.

Harry ignored him. He looked at his watch – he had arrived right on time, but of course Slughorn was late. When he looked up he saw that Malfoy had come closer.

"Look, Potter, I'm sorry about your potion earlier-"

"Don't speak to me."

Malfoy stopped. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then they heard hurried footsteps on the stairs.

"Sorry, boys," said Slughorn. "I got held up after dinner."

He walked past them and unlocked the door to the classroom.

"There we go," he said and went inside.

"Potter, you will be brewing your skelegro-potion again, so you can set up your cauldron anywhere you like. Everything you'll need is already on the table. Malfoy, if you'll come with me."

Harry picked out a workstation and pulled out his potions textbook. He listened to Slughorn instruct Malfoy on how he wanted him to catalogue newly received ingredients for the potions class.

"Is that clear?" he asked when he was done.

"Yes," said Malfoy.

"Good, then I will leave both of you to your work. My office is just down the hall if you need me, and I will be back in an hour and a half when your detention is over. And just so we're clear about this – I don't want to come back and find my classroom to be a smoking ruin. I have put up detection spells, and if either of you tries to cast any spells at all I will know it immediately."

They both nodded. Slughorn left, and Harry began reading through the instructions. He could hear Malfoy taking out ink and parchment, opening the boxes and looking through their contents. He tried to ignore it. It was a difficult potion. He had gotten it almost perfect before Malfoy spilled it all on the floor, but he had to concentrate if he wanted to do it again. For a while they worked in silence, but then he heard Malfoy pushing out his chair. He pretended not to notice. He heard him walk across the room and stop by Harry's desk.

"We need to talk," he said.

Harry didn't answer. He dropped the dried poppy-petals into his cauldron and looked at the instructions again. He had to let the potion simmer for five minutes before doing anything else. He let his eyes wander down the page, looking for other ingredients he could prepare. He had to slice his mandrake root. He found a knife and cutting board and went to work.

"Potter-"

"Didn't you hear what I said to you outside?" he said. "Don't talk to me, Malfoy."

"I'm sorry I had to get you into detention."

Harry looked up, forgetting himself.

"You did this on purpose?"

"Like I said, I needed to talk to you and you wouldn't let me. If I had just walked up to you in The Great Hall, your private army would have lynched me."

"So you got us both into detention?"

Malfoy shrugged.

"Couldn't think of anything else."

"I thought we were done pretending to be friends."

"I didn't think I was being friendly."

Harry went back to slicing the mandrake into long, thin strips.

"You're right – you're not. Just because I'm stuck with you here doesn't mean I will talk to you, so piss off."

"I'm sorry about the other day too. About what I said about you and your friends. I wasn't myself."

"Yes you were," said Harry putting down the knife. "For the first time this year you were acting exactly like yourself. Which was a good reminder of what you're really like, because apparently I had allowed myself to forget."

"Potter-"

"This whole idiotic thing started because I thought you might have changed after the war and – I don't know, maybe I felt guilty about some of the things that happened to you, and it really messed me up seeing you at your trial, and you played it well, I'll give you credit for that. For a while I really thought that this," he gestured to both of them, "whatever it was could work out somehow. And then I was reminded what an absolute idiot you are, and I'm not going to forget that again. Nothing has changed. I never want you near me or any of my friends again."

"Look, I'm sorry, you have no idea how sorry I am, but-"

"You called her a mudblood. Remember how you said you didn't use that word anymore? Must have slipped your mind. But I suppose some things are hard to unlearn."

"I said I was sorry! It was a mistake."

"What do you want from me?"

"I need your help."

Harry rolled his eyes. He had sliced more than enough mandrake root, but he needed to keep his hands busy, so he picked the knife again, picked out another root and started over.

"It has nothing to do with me. It's about Azkaban."

Harry took up a handful of white sand and let it run through his fingers into the cauldron.

"You've never been there, have you?"

"There were enough people outside of Azkaban who were trying to kill me. I never felt the need to go check out the ones still in prison."

"It's not just death eaters in there. But even if it were – you know I went there. You know I didn't want to go, but if I had known what it would be like, if I had had any idea, I wouldn't have gone. Nobody could have forced me to. You can't even imagine what it's like. They're not even people anymore, they're just shells. I couldn't even tell which ones were dead and which ones were still alive; there was just nothing in their eyes. My father was just… I don't think he recognized us, not really. He was half dead."

Harry wanted him to shut up. Malfoy was speaking urgently, and he sounded scared of what he was saying. The hairs on Harry's neck stood up just listening to him, and it didn't sound like lies, but neither had everything else he had told Harry over the last few months, and that had all turned out to be fake, hadn't it? Besides, he knew what Malfoy was telling him couldn't be true.

"Sirius was in Azkaban for twelve years," he said.

Malfoy halted in his urgency.

"Sirius Black?"

The name sounded different when Malfoy said it. His emphasis was on Black rather than Sirius, pronounced so the pure blood could be heard. He spoke it with the same respect that he had for his own family name. In his voice, the tapestry of the Black family tree unfolded in every syllable.

"Yes," said Harry. "He was my godfather. And he was still a person."

"He might have been resistant to dementors," said Malfoy hesitantly. "Some people are. That would explain how he was able to escape. Obsessive people are less receptive. As long as it is not a happy thing, it gives them something to hold onto that the dementors can't take away. There were some of the Death Eaters who went to Azkaban that definitely hadn't been the Dark Lord's most loyal servants when they were locked up. But they were different when they came back, and they were very… devoted."

He shook his head.

"But even then… from what I've heard, people go mad long before that. I wouldn't have thought anyone could survive even a year. Twelve is just… it sounds impossible."

Harry didn't answer him. He went on with the potion, but Malfoy didn't leave. He just stood there across from him, as if he was still waiting for some sort of answer.

"I still don't know what you want from me," said Harry.

"I need you to help me destroy it."

Harry scoffed.

"Really? You're asking me to help you get your father out of Azkaban? Why do you think I would-"

"No, it's not about him! Didn't you hear what I said? He's dead. It's that place – it's evil."

"Since when did you start caring about that? If this is about "dragging your name out of the gutter", then you've gone too far. You're fucking mad, Malfoy."

"It's not about that, it's – I've been thinking about it all the time since I came back. It's not evil in a conscious way, but it's still evil and I think it makes our whole world darker. It makes people darker, not just the ones who go there or go near it, but everyone. I think it causes evil. You know what dementors are like – why would anyone use them to guard a prison? People have been sent there for theft, for underage magic, tiny things like that. To be locked up with dementors until they die or go mad. People aren't supposed to do that to each other. It's wrong. It's sick."

"Then why do we do it?"

"I don't know. I think it might be sort of like… like a very bright light. You can't look at directly without hurting your eyes, but even though you don't look at the source, you can still see the light. So maybe Azkaban is evil in this way where it hurts too much to think about it, so people just don't, and instead it becomes this black spot that they work around without considering it, even the ones who guard the place, and the ones who sentence people to go to there. But just because we don't look at the source that doesn't mean the evil doesn't affect us. Does that make sense?"

Harry nodded, mostly to stop him spewing more words at him. It did make sense, at least a little bit. It sounded far out, but then he had known about Azkaban for so long, and the thought that it was too cruel had never occurred to him. He had never questioned the use of dementors to guard the prison, and he should have, shouldn't he?

"And the other day," Malfoy continued. "The things I said – I'm not going to pretend that I didn't say them. I know I did, and I'm sorry, but I don't think I would have said any of it if I hadn't been to Azkaban. While we were there, I accidentally got out of reach of the patronus. It was only a couple of seconds, it shouldn't have meant anything, but I wasn't really myself afterwards. That's why I came back late, too. The other day, I just wanted you to leave me alone. I said what I thought would make you the most angry. It wasn't about them. And I don't know why I wanted you to be angry. I just didn't have enough… space in my head, and I wanted you to go away."

Harry didn't say anything. Malfoy's apprehension was a physical thing in the silence. It would be so easy to just… but he couldn't forget what Malfoy had said, it didn't seem right to just dismiss it like that, like it hadn't been wrong. But he also remembered what it had felt like when he carried the locket that had been Voldemort's horcrux. He remembered what it had done to Ron too. Being that close to something evil. And he did believe what Malfoy had told him about Azkaban.

"Why are you asking me to help you?"

Malfoy threw out his arms.

"Because I don't know what else to do! This is all heroics, I don't know what to do with that."

"And you think I do?"

"Yes!"

Harry shrugged.

"Well, I don't."

"What do you mean you don't? You're the bloody expert on heroics. You're the Chosen One, you defeated the Dark Lord and every other dark thing you could find in the world. You've almost gotten yourself killed with heroics every year since I met you."

"I'm good at the almost getting myself killed part of it."

Malfoy didn't laugh.

"Is that a no, then? You won't help me?"

"I wish we didn't have to talk about this while I was trying to get a potion right. You realize I have to turn this in?"

"You haven't messed up yet as far as I can tell," said Malfoy.

He stepped away from Harry's table. He didn't look disappointed, just resigned.

"But I'll leave you to it then."

"Look, I didn't say I wouldn't help you, I'm just saying that I can't do all the things people think I can do."
Malfoy raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, I've always had help. Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore's Army, the Order – and we've been lucky. You said it yourself, I almost got myself killed all those times, and I might just as well have died, it wasn't because I'm some great wizard that I didn't, it was just…"

He gestured vaguely. He sort of expected Malfoy to protest, people always did when he tried to tell them this, but even if Malfoy was asking for his help, he wasn't about to insist on Harry's greatness. He just shrugged.

"You can bring all the help you want," he said. "Call in your whole army if you think they're willing to work with us, I don't care how we do this. I'm asking you because you're the expert, so if you think we need to invite half of Gryffindor House, then I won't object."

Harry took a deep breath.

"Okay," he said.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

Malfoy nodded. He looked both relieved and like he was trying not to look relieved.

"Okay. Thank you," he said.

"We'll talk about the rest later."

Malfoy nodded.

"It's the asphodel now," he said, pointing to Harry's cauldron.