Chapter 9: The artist and the seer
The copy of Nature's Nobility they found lying on top of the pile in Lucius's study did not bring them any further in their investigations. The name of Flavia Malfoy was mentioned nowhere, and admittedly, the book's coverage of female members of pure-blood families was altogether rather poor. Even Walburga Black was missing.
After hours of fruitless searching, they fell into the armchairs in front of Lucius the first's portrait and had supper served in the drawing room. Just as the conversation was getting dangerously close to the issue of Muggle royalty and marriage, Harry took off the locket and was about to show it to Lucius.
"You think I didn't show it to him?" Draco whispered.
"You did?"
"Of course. He had never seen it."
"What about the inside?" Harry opened the locket and the mirrors with the depictions of the set square and the drawing compass gleamed in his hands.
"Nope. He has no clue."
Harry closed the locket again and the inscription coniunctio aeterna shone up along its edge for a couple of seconds.
"Did you run the 'eternal bond' by him?"
By way of reply, Draco addressed Lucius:
"Sir, does the phrase coniunctio aeterna say anything to you?"
Lucius raised his eyebrows, eyeing the locket with incredulous surprise, and snorted a laugh into his cheeks.
"That phrase gave me a mighty deal of trouble! A great travail I never shall forget."
"Travail?! What travail, Sir?" Harry and Draco perked up their ears.
"It is to Herman that I am in debt for this spellbinding story. Yet it is a long one."
"Oh, please tell us, Sir."
"Well, well, my boys, then listen if you will."
Lucius leaned smugly back in his armchair and stretched out his legs.
"The picture of Sir Herman on this wall was not when I was a young man like you. Yet it befits an ancient noble house to honour kin, both living and deceased, its very founding father all the more. To honour him on canvas was the least that I could do. I summoned my best men, sent them to France, to Italy, to Spain, to find the best of artists, and they brought a young Venetian boy, a Muggle youth. A Muggle, yet a wizard with the oils, the brush was like a wand in his deft hand. He painted me, and then Sir Herman, and—"
"Excuse me, Sir, but how could he paint Sir Herman, who had long passed away?" Harry interrupted. "How would he know how he looked?"
"He knew not! No one could know that for sure. But we are wizards, are we not? We cure our lack of knowledge with a cunning spell, and with a soothsay'r who the past can tell."
"A soothsayer?" Harry frowned.
"A seer, you know," Draco clarified. "The thing that Trelawney isn't."
"Yeah, but... I didn't realise that seers also tell the past."
"The art of seeing is declined these days. In my day, they could look into the past, into the future and into the depths of thine unsettled soul." Lucius looked deep into Harry's eyes as if he positively saw an unsettled soul behind them.
"I asked my friend, a well known seer in York, he kindly sent his firstborn, and she was a gifted witch! With ease and promptitude her eye would reach down to the deepest tomb, and deeper still, and what she saw she gave to her swift quill."
Lucius paused, visibly enjoying the silence and the undivided attention of the young wizards.
"The work began, and what she put to words, he brought to canvas. And before I knew, as often happen'th to the young like you, they fell in love. O me, I dare not guess what happened when I heard her cry out 'yes'.
"Days passed, weeks passed, Sir Herman's face took shape, gained colour, detail, and the boy asked me to put in a good word on his behalf to the girl's father, and I said I would, no sooner than Sir Herman's picture was complete and ready.
"And the day came soon. In awe, my artist saw his promised wife waving her wand, bringing his oil to life."
Lucius sighed, and the expression of his face changed from romantic to cynical. Apparently, that was where the actual travail began.
"O me, o me! What followed was a trial! In life I had not seen outpour so vile! Sir Herman cursed, and swung his sword in rage, set his own picture instantly on fire. I tried to speak to him and to assuage his temper. But all I could gather was that he did lack a piece of his attire. A missing locket was the only cause of his distress."
Lucius gazed with resentment at the locket, which now lay on the table between the plates. The steak and kidney pie stood forgotten next to it.
"Coniunctio aeterna, he kept repeating that mysterious phrase, engraved on his dear locket. Many days we searched for it, the soothsay'r with her eye, my men with their bare hands, to pacify the vexed Sir Herman. Yet we had no luck. Then by a sudden thought my mind was struck.
"My artist, who knew not its shape or hue, could not depict the locket in full view. And so I told him: 'Show it not! Conceal it! Let him not see it! Rather let him feel it! Enclose it in Sir Herman's mighty hand!' And so he did."
"So, that means— Wait!" Draco sprang up from his seat and darted to Sir Herman's portrait. Harry followed with measured pace in keeping with the image of a noble heir.
One would never notice if one didn't know; it was right there. A thin necklace flowed out of the centre of the clenched fingers of Herman's right hand.
"The trouble was my artist could not take it," Lucius continued, once Harry and Draco were back in their armchairs, "It was the first time in his Muggle life to see a picture move, and speak, and swear, and then to paint over a moving form. Sir Herman was a wretch. He used to storm out of his picture, to my boy's despair, whenever he applied new layers of paint to turn his palm to fist.
"Without complaint, he worked and worked with patience and resolve, yet one could see the fear spread through his features. He soon began to keep out of my way, and even turned away his fiancée. And then he took his worries to false teachers that he discovered at the local church.
"I know not what they asked and how he cracked, but my collection started to attract undue attention of the Muggle clergy.
"As you shall know, the times were growing dire. In Europe some of us were killed by fire, and even here a few purported hags were hanged. I had no worries for myself. The bishop was my creature. Yet the seer, the daughter of my friend who worked for me, belonged to a more vulnerable tier."
Dramatic as it was, Lucius the first's account had drifted miles away from the main object of their interest, the locket, and Harry had a hard time concentrating. He wondered what kept Draco so alert. What did Draco hear in that tale that he himself didn't?
"One day, after Sir Herman fiercely cursed the family my boy had left in Venice, for once he was in rage and did his worst. He called his former lover 'Satan's bitch' and threatened to denounce her as a witch. Let us be honest, he became a menace. She turned to me for help. I made him finish the painting at the point of my own wand, to give Sir Herman his 'eternal bond', but then... this was his last artistic image. My men put him to silence."
A silence followed. Lucius's face went grave and still, but then woke up again with a flicker of puzzlement.
"Since that day, alas, no worthy Muggle came my way."
In deference to the tragic ending, Harry restrained himself to sit still and look solemn for a minute, but finally indulged in another helping of pie, to avoid falling asleep. Draco was rubbing his chin with a tense frown.
"Sir!" he said finally. "Sir, please, could you grant us a boon?"
"What is it, Mister Potter?"
"Could you talk to Sir Herman and try to find out everything he knows about the locket? Please, Sir." Draco spoke so humbly, as if he had rented out his mortal shell to a house-elf. "How it works. Who knows how it works, if Sir Herman himself doesn't. Where he got it from. Who made it, perhaps." Draco looked at Harry for support.
"Yes." Harry cleared his throat. "And, ehm, why—"
"And why it was so important to him? Please, Sir! You are the only person here who Sir Herman has ever talked to, after his death."
"For centuries Sir Herman hath not spoken. Since he could hold his locket in his hand, his troubled mind found peace. Believe me, boys, asleep he is much better than awoken, and I shall not disturb his blessed poise."
"But Sir, it is vital for us to find out how it works. Otherwise..." Harry had not actually thought of a good argument, but fortunately, Draco interrupted:
"Sir, did you say you had no luck with the Muggles after that incident?"
"That is correct," replied Lucius.
"Has the Malfoy family made any progress in its relations with Muggles of power since?" Draco asked, looking at Harry. With a barely visible head shake he indicated a negative answer.
"No, no. Not that I know of," replied Harry.
"Sir! How do you think Draco is supposed to succeed in his courtship of a Muggle princess when a curse so powerful might be hanging over this house?"
Harry could hardly believe his eyes, but Draco's far-fetched speculation, more aptly described as nonsense, struck some secret chord with his ancestor. Lucius looked at him like he was hit by a great revelation.
"O, that accounteth for the greater part of my subsequent failures! Tell me more! What kind of curse?"
"That is exactly what we're trying to find out. That's why we need to know everything about this locket, to eventually break its spell."
Draco scored. Lucius contemplated, then he rose and made a step towards the mantelpiece, but stopped and contemplated again. He raised the cloth covering the table on the left hand side of his painting and pulled a large empty glass carafe from under it.
"So be it. I shall try. No hardship, is it? But first to Paris I must pay a visit."
And he exited with the carafe in the opposite direction.
The Malfoys' library was the next stop in their journey. They went there the next morning without a clear plan and in the hope to get inspired as they went. But the endless rows of books on identical-looking shelves that lacked discernible structure or system were anything but inspiring.
Draco seemed to feel reasonably at home in one part of it, which comprised five bookcases packed with volumes on potions and dark arts. But most of the library was not only unexplored by him, but also hardly explorable. The letters on the spines of the books started rotating, shifting, swapping places and vanishing as soon as one looked closer at them. Several bookcases at the back of the room shot lightning bolts and gusts of smoke at anyone who approached. If Harry had needed a quick recipe for a Horcrux, he could just stretch out his arm. But history? History was entirely absent in the unprotected part of the library.
Harry looked over Draco's shoulder as he was brushing his finger along the side of a crystal ball the size of a grapefruit hanging from the ceiling on a long silver chain in the middle of the library. Blurred words emerged one by one from the depth of the ball and sharpened as they floated up to its surface: Malecrit, Maledictus, Malevolent Mixture... When the latter came up, a dozen pencil-thin beams of light shot from the ball to the potions shelves highlighting the books that, Harry guessed, covered Malevolent Mixture.
Draco continued scrolling: Malfoy, Abraxas... A couple of beams shot towards the same shelf. Malfoy, Armand—see Malfoy, Herman. Malfoy, Brutus—nothing. Malfoy, Cassius—nothing. D, E, F... The name 'Malfoy, Flavia' did not surface. What had they expected? Malfoy, Geoffrey—nothing. Malfoy, Herman— Begone, filth! Malfoy, Hyperion... Draco sighed.
"If a word does not show up or does not link to any of the books, it does not mean there's nothing there. It could be in one of the protected sections."
"What are we actually looking for?"
"Good question. Anything on Cassius. Anything on Flavia. Anything on Malfoys in Azkaban."
"Anything weird," added Harry.
"Yeah, anything weird. I bet that will be protected by the most murderous spells of all."
"Any chance to disable those murderous spells, you reckon?"
"Not past my father. But..." Draco hesitated. "Call Thorny!"
In a second, Thorny stood before them, an unreadable expression in his large green eyes. If he had succeeded Dobby in his duties, then the role of librarian must have been one of them. Harry passed their queries on to him and Thorny peered obediently into the crystal ball.
How much Harry would have given to be doing this with Dobby right now! His brother, as much as he looked like him, radiated unmistakable distrust that felt like anything but a good starting point for a fruitful collaboration. He shared little of what he saw in the ball and finally turned to them with an air of chilly professionalism.
"Concerning Master Cassius, two titles in the semi-restricted section."
"Great! Will you bring them here? Please?" Harry wondered whether he should have added 'please'.
"Of course, sir!" Thorny conjured a piece of cornflower-blue parchment and a quill. "As soon as Masters have indicated the desired title, stated the motivation for their interest, and signed the agreement at the bottom of this document that the knowledge obtained will be used exclusively in accordance with the objectives specified in their statement of motivation—"
"Wait," Harry interrupted, "Why all this—? Can't we just—?"
"It is Master Lucius's policy to secure transparency of the borrower's motives and cooperation in case their interests might change in the course of time. Therefore the above-mentioned agreement must be signed with the borrower's blood." While Harry wondered if he'd heard it right, Thorny summoned a small exquisite knife. "The resulting bond does not equal the Unbreakable Vow in power, but—"
"Wait, Thorny, no. Master Lucius is gone for good. I'm the—" Harry tried to object, but Draco snatched the parchment and the quill out of his hand and started to scribble something.
"This, of course, is no problem at all, sir! Thorny will have Young Master's request taken to Master Lucius at his present place of stay at the nearest opportunity."
As far as Harry knew, according to the relaxed post-war regulations, high-security prisoners of Azkaban were allowed to receive and send mail once in five months, and judging by the keenness with which Draco was filling the blue parchment with text, the next opportunity could not be that far off. He added two more sentences and looked up.
"What are the titles? We have to fill in the titles."
"Thorny will be happy to fill in the titles for Masters, as soon as Master Lucius has given his consent to revealing the results of the semi-restricted bibliographical search Thorny has just performed. This, of course, is also completely unproblematic," Thorny summoned a piece of olive-green parchment, "if Masters indicate their search terms, state their reasons, and sign here. The procedure is otherwise the same."
Draco blinked at Thorny, the quill frozen in his hand.
"That means..." Draco's look went opaque, "we first need to—"
"Master Potter is absolutely right! Thorny will first send a request concerning the results of the search. The closest opportunity for that will be on the seventeenth of October, and provided a timely and positive reply from Master Lucius, the request for the books can follow on the seventeenth of March next year. Upon Master Lucius's positive reply to that, Masters are very welcome to peruse the literature on Master Cassius from the semi-restricted section."
Draco dropped the quill.
"As far as Young Master's other request is concerned, Thorny's search for the name 'Flavia Malfoy' yielded no results, but the name 'Flavia' does occur in the catalogue. There are altogether thirty-six occurrences, of which two are in the free section, nine in the semi-restricted section, and twenty-five are fully restricted. Masters need not worry about the latter. The procedure is only slightly more involved than in the semi-restricted case."
"Never mind, Thorny," Draco said, rejecting the orchid-pink piece of parchment Thorny was already handing him. "Thank you."
The two free titles from the 'Flavia' list, which Thorny obligingly fetched for them from the shelves before leaving, could be dismissed in a matter of minutes. One Flavia turned out to be a Quidditch player on the Irish National Team in the 1950s. The other was not a person at all, but a Roman province in Britain in the third century AD.
Harry and Draco looked at each other. Harry had an inkling of what that meant but was not ready to embrace the consequences. Draco was the first to venture out of the deadlock:
"We'll have to go to Hogwarts. The library there is at least searchable."
"It's Monday," replied Harry.
"Huh?"
"I'm not going to Hogwarts as Malfoy, and it's Monday. You remember what we were going to do on Monday? Kingsley is in his office. Robards probably too. We go to the Ministry, we explain our situation, and we end this ridiculous masquerade."
"Right! You take off your Malfoy mask, I get out of my Potter costume, and we walk out as ourselves!" Draco sneered. "I'm afraid, Potter, the low-tech Muggle solution to that might require flaying."
"I guess we'll have to stick to the costumes for some time. But we'll do it as ourselves." Harry said calmly. "We can also use all the help we can get to transfigure back."
"Okay, let's do it. But you realise what is going to happen if we ask 'officially' for help?" Draco made a know-it-all face. "They will confiscate the locket, lock us up in the Department of Mysteries, establish an international advisory board that will meet twice a year to decide on the research plan, but the first two years they won't meet because the British side won't be adequately represented, because Shacklebolt has drained Mysteries of all its best brains! Mysteries is understaffed and hiring, if you haven't noticed. They are so desperate, they would hire even me! And if it's me doing all the work in the end anyway, then we can just as well skip the official part, and proceed straight to research!"
Where had Malfoy picked up this style of arguing? Weeks spent in Courtroom number eleven had obviously left their mark. But like most of the defence speeches Harry had heard there, upon closer inspection, it was nothing more than a bunch of impressive exaggerations. They would not lock them up and they would not confiscate anything, although in one thing Draco was probably right. If the Ministry took over the control in their case, the progress they would make would not be much faster than the correspondence with Lucius Malfoy in the matter of the library.
"And if this gets into the papers... I don't even dare guess what it will be like when this gets into the papers! 'Does your Dark Mark hurt, Mr Potter?' 'How does it feel to be half-blood, Mr Malfoy?' 'Which size fits better, Ms Weasley?' We might manage to solve our problem at some point, but the story will stick for life!"
Until this moment, Harry had not thought of how this whole affair might affect Ginny, but now that Malfoy mentioned size, Harry's resolve to play with open cards slightly diminished.
"We could ask Kingsley to handle our case confidentially."
"Well then, we can handle it confidentially ourselves, we don't need Shacklebolt for that."
Harry sighed. Malfoy was making it complicated, but the matter was very simple, whether they liked it or not. He really had no choice.
"I'm a Ministry employee. I cannot not inform them about this situation!"
"If you're a Ministry employee, why aren't you at the Ministry? It's Monday."
"I'm on leave."
"How long?"
"For the whole Hogwarts year. Until next June."
"Unpaid leave, I suppose?"
"Yes. What does that matter?"
"Well, that matters loads. When you are on leave, let alone unpaid, you are not on duty. The Ministry has no hold over you. If, during your leave, you choose to transfigure into a blast-ended skrewt, it's none of their business."
'Blast-ended skrewt' was spot on. The idea of being on leave, and not a proper Ministry employee yet, and in fact, not even the Hero of Hogwarts, but just a person, a young man in the last season of his childhood and at the start of his adult life gave Harry an unfamiliar bittersweet feeling coupled with a guilty realisation that he really would not mind not being himself for a while. Except—
Well, except that he would not be just some young man. He would be a former Death Eater who missed Azkaban by an inch. He might be better off being a blast-ended skrewt. The bittersweetness faded and gave way to annoyance, growing quickly into anger—a feeling with which Harry felt much more at home.
"Look, Potter! We have a whole year to figure it out without upsetting anyone. Let's just—"
"Without upsetting anyone?" Harry laughed sardonically. "Well! Firstly. Do you actually realise what you are asking of me? Now I'm supposed to take the dragon piss bombs for you. And I'm—"
"There will be no dragon piss at Hogwarts."
"—supposed to serve your sentence!"
Draco tensed.
"I'm supposed to take Muggle studies, and I'm—"
"There's nothing wrong with Muggle studies. Muggles are quite okay, actually," Draco squeezed in sheepishly.
"—supposed to spend my Hogsmeade weekends with some blasted probation officer instead of hanging out with my friends! While you, who could be rotting in Azkaban for your recent adventures, would be partying in the Three Broomsticks! I am already very, very upset!"
Harry could tell that Draco was hurt. His smirk and a sparkle of resistance lingered in his face for a few moments, but died.
"I don't want you to rot in Azkaban, but for fairness' sake!"
"I will come along to the probation officer, and I will come along to Muggle Studies," Draco returned.
"And how will that look? Harry Potter babysitting Draco Malfoy twenty-four/seven?!"
"Oh, that is the least of our problems. I could do it invisibly." Draco fixed him with his gaze. "What can I offer you to make it a fair deal?"
Was Malfoy trying to bribe him, or what? There was no way to make it a fair deal. And it was indeed the least of their problems.
"Secondly. We'd have to tell Ron and Hermione."
"Please! You tell one Gryffindor, the whole school knows the next day."
"Nothing of the sort! We've done things together no one has the faintest idea—"
"Confess, Potter, you just want Granger to do all the work."
"This has nothing to do with the work. They are my friends, and they will be very, very upset if I don't tell them about... this."
"Friends," Draco pressed through his teeth. This last argument did not seem to have made much of an impression.
"And thirdly. Ginny will be very, very, very upset, if it turns out that I've smuggled a Malfoy into—"
"I will stay away from her, don't worry! I'm not interested in Weasley. At all." But Draco's brave expression suddenly started to falter. "The question is rather, will she stay away from me?"
"She will, if we tell her who you are!"
"Wait, wait, wait, not so fast!" Draco furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. "What is actually the exact nature of your relationship?"
Oh no! Not that question! Harry wished he knew the answer, but even if he did, Malfoy was the last person on this planet he would share it with. His relationship with Ginny was confusing enough, and the thought of Malfoy poking in it was unbearable.
"Do you shag?" Draco asked innocently.
Now, this was crossing all the boundaries! Harry felt his fists clench. The only thing that stopped him from taking a swing were the yellowish traces of the three-days-old bruises on what had once been his own face. Harry breathed deeply and counted to ten.
"I take it as a 'no'." Draco said coolly. "Which is perfect! I mean, no offence, but in the present situation that makes things a lot easier. We'd be just friendly fellow Gryffindors, like with everyone else, and should there transpire any tendencies towards unwanted intimacy, I could still tell her who I am. Any time. And I will, because I really don't want her on me."
Harry could not quite grasp how a grown healthy male could not be interested in Ginny, but oddly, Malfoy sounded like he absolutely meant it. Had his parents put a blood-traitor-aversion jinx on him? Or was he so deeply traumatised by Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hex in their fifth? Thinking of the latter, Harry suddenly felt an overpowering tickle in his nose and had to sneeze three times before he could breathe normally again.
"But if she stays away from me, there's no need to tell her just yet, I would say," Draco continued. "We might find a solution in three weeks time, and then everything is back to normal, no one has noticed a thing, and no harm is done."
Harry was sure that Ginny would see it differently. If she found out that the guy she thought was Harry had been Draco Malfoy in disguise for months, weeks, or even just days, she would jinx them senseless. Both. The only way to avert this deplorable fate was to tell her right away. The day before yesterday, if that were possible, or now, as the closest available option.
But to tell Ginny anything now was not so easy. 'See you at Hogwarts' were her last words and they still echoed in Harry's mind with humiliation and bitterness. If she just talked to him, if she hadn't pulled that ridiculous stunt and hadn't fled from the island without a word, he wouldn't be sitting here with a black-haired green-eyed Malfoy and a scar on his left arm in the first place. They would be chasing each other on broomsticks in the mountains of Montenegro, and who knows, maybe they would have even got to proper shagging by now. But the truth was that she had left, and that she preferred not to be bothered at the moment, and that he was damn fucking furious with her.
Harry let his gaze wander along the shelves with books on deadly poisons and Unforgivable Curses. The crystal ball was rotating slowly in the centre of the library, the words 'Begone, filth!' shone on its surface, and a strange thought crossed Harry's mind. If Ginny was not talking to him, then how could he talk to her? If she didn't want to know how he was doing, then why should she know? She wanted to be left in peace? It sounded like Malfoy would do a much better job there than himself. And Ron and Hermione? Well. Didn't they have a few more chapters of the magical sex book to work on? They wouldn't miss him, surely.
'That will teach you, Ms Weasley!' Harry thought and felt oddly appeased. The phrase 'Begone, filth!' sank into the depths of the crystal ball, and 'Malfoy, Hyperion' floated up in its stead.
"Okay," Harry said finally. "But if we haven't swapped back by Christmas, we are telling Ron, Hermione and Ginny everything."
"Deal."
Draco instructed Harry to have Cherritry pack his trunk for Hogwarts, which she immediately delegated to Swingy—that was the correct name of the elf who dressed in origami. A faint flash of not-quite-surprise swept over Cherritry's face when Harry asked her to take the packed trunk to Grimmauld Place the next day, instead of King's Cross on the first of September. And yes, they should please also pack his Quidditch robes! Draco smirked at that one.
After that, there was little they could do. All their attempts to squeeze useful information out of the house-elves ended in polite, neutral, or impolite reminders that Draco was not their real master, which often ended in heads banging against walls. The only reason to stay at the Manor any longer was to wait for news from Lucius the first, and he was taking his time. They checked on him every now and again in the drawing room, but apparently, he was still in Paris.
The thought of going back to Hogwarts in Malfoy's body started to make itself strangely comfortable in Harry's mind. If need be, they could always Polyjuice into each other. That is, if they made some Polyjuice. Harry had little doubt that Draco's potions brewery would store all the necessary ingredients. What a shame the time was too short! But the chagrin felt suspiciously like relief. An hour in the Gryffindor common room with Ron snogging Hermione and Ginny purposefully looking away was not worth the hassle.
"Potter?"
"Malfoy?"
"Since we have nothing else to do," Draco said, inspecting his reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece, "could you teach me the Patronus?" He glanced at Harry over his shoulder. "Please."
"Why? Want to trick me into giving you my wand?"
"Oh, come on! If anything happens to you here, the elves won't let me out alive."
"Why then?"
"Why not?" Draco turned around and faced him. "A useful piece of magic, isn't it? And it's part of the new seventh year curriculum for Defence."
The Patronus was part of a convincing portrayal of Harry Potter, that's what it was. Draco's train of thought was not too hard to follow.
"It's unlikely that your Patronus will take the same form as mine."
"If I could produce an incorporeal and blame the rest on a headache?"
A headache? Blaming things on a headache was not part of Harry's repertoire, only Malfoy could come up with something like this. Harry chuckled inwardly, but curiosity got the best of him. What kind of animal was hidden at the bottom of Draco's soul? Not in its dark corners, but in its radiant core? There was only one way to find out.
"It wouldn't hurt to have a Boggart, or something. Something creepy to practise on."
Draco looked into the mirror again.
"What gives me creeps most in this room is that guy over there." He pointed at his own reflection.
Harry looked at himself, too. Well, yes, that could do it. He pulled out Draco's wand and realised that he was nervous. In Malfoy's body and with Malfoy's wand, would he still be able to—?
When he had stood in front of Dumbledore's Army for the first time, he was nervous, too. But he tried not to think about everyone's expectations, and simply did his best and enjoyed it. And it worked. He remembered the silvery Patronuses spilling out of their wands: Hermione's otter, Cho's swan, Ginny's horse... Damn was he proud! Who was that pathetic albino peacock in the mirror against that? Harry gave his wand a light twist.
"Expecto patronum!"
A beam of silver light gushed out. And slowly, a majestic stag came forward in its midst. The stag strode towards the mirror to meet another stag coming from the other side. The stags looked warily at each other, separated by the glass, and exploded into a cloud of gleaming dust.
"You need to think of something happy. Really happy. Not just a bet you won or a prank you got away with. Something you can hold on to when your soul is being ripped off. And then..." Harry demonstrated the wand movement once again.
Right. The wand. He pulled out the other one and threw it to Draco. Draco caught it in midair and aimed at his reflection.
Was it the memory he'd just conjured? A faint smile lit up his lips, not a sneer, not a smirk, but a smile. But his eyes remained sad.
"Expecto patronum!"
Nothing happened.
Draco tried again. And a few more times. He wouldn't reveal to Harry the happy moments he was thinking of, and none of them were strong enough to work their way all across his face, let alone to let loose a Patronus.
"It must be something... something that warms you deep inside."
But Draco only seemed to get sadder.
"I have nothing suitable, I'm afraid," he said after another dozen tries. He turned the wand around a couple of times in his hands and threw it back to Harry.
