Note: A shout-out to all readers from continental Europe and a reminder (not only for European readers): Feel free to leave a comment in any language you feel most comfortable with. If I can't understand the language, there is Google Translate and its ilk.
Oh, and have I said this already? This is my favourite chapter.
Chapter 23: Beauxbatons
The first thing Draco saw when he opened his eyes was a dazzling blue sky above him. He awakened with a jolt. Had he fallen asleep outside? But a quick look around put his mind at rest. He was in an irregularly-shaped room with two beds separated by an oval nightstand. The other bed was unmade but empty. Potter was in the shower. The soothing purr of water seeped through a glass door painted with warm mellow colours and contours of twisting and curling plants.
The room was somewhat lacking in the horizontal dimensions, but it made up for it in the vertical. The ceiling was charmed, like in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and the walls seemed to fade as they rose, opening into an endless space full of light and air.
Unlike the sky above his bed, Draco's memories of last night were anything but clear. Upon their arrival, he was overrun by a torrent of girls, who wanted to shake his hand and chattered all at once in what they probably thought was English. Madame Maxime, the only memorable female in the room, towered above them and was making introductions, but not a single face had stuck with him, let alone the name attached to it.
Before Madame Maxime excused herself for the rest of the holidays, she handed them over to a pair who navigated them through the rest of Christmas Eve. One was an annoying little brat from Luxembourg. Fourteen, or fifteen? Anyway, clearly a minor, because the wine he tried to sneak into his glass turned into water as soon as his lips touched it, regardless of the tricks they tried. The other one was a chilled-out lamppost of a boy, with straw-coloured stubble all over his skull. He kept inconspicuously refilling their glasses and explaining the desserts down to the last ingredient. There were a ridiculous number of desserts. They said thirteen, but it felt like fifty.
The last thing Draco could remember was what's-his-name, the tall one, peeling him off an enormous ice statue which he had enveloped in an embrace, in the hope of regulating his body temperature, whereafter they waded together through an impenetrable fog. That was probably how he, and Potter, ended up in this room, but that bit escaped Draco's memory.
Potter came out of the shower wrapped in a towel.
"Klein and Seba will pick us up in half an hour. You'd better hurry up."
Oh right. Klein and Seba. Seba was the lamppost, and Klein the little brat.
As Draco opened the front door, a huge icicle blew past him, barely two inches before his nose, and crashed onto the floor, at the very spot where he would have set his foot, had his reactions been slower. Seba, who had just arrived on the uncovered porch, gave the roof above the door a concerned look, and vanished a row of icicles that had been hanging down menacingly like teeth of a hungry monster.
"Merry Christmas!" Klein slipped forward from behind Seba's back.
"Happy Yuletide," replied Draco.
Seba shot him an interested look, which lasted for just a moment too long to be considered unremarkable.
They left the porch and started walking. The place where they had spent the night was a wing of a bigger structure crowned with an array of domes of different sizes.
"This is our Astronomical Observatory," Klein said. "It's not just for the students. All sorts of researchers hang out here all year round. That's why they built the guest house next to it."
They walked down the steep stairs, from the cliff on which the Observatory sat perched, and could now see what yesterday looked like the night sky turned upside down, the windows and street lamps that had shone like stars below them. The campus lay on a long plateau surrounded by mountain tops and ridges with a small alpine lake in the middle. Charming chateaux stood here and there facing the lake, amidst thinly scattered crooked pine trees. The walls of the castle they had flown over last night grew out of the slopes of the highest peak, which now lay at some distance on their right. Draco hadn't realised it, but now, in comparison, Hogwarts seemed like a really small school.
"Should we give you the complete tour," asked Klein, "or do you just want to know the shortest way to the—?"
"Library," Draco finished the sentence.
The library turned out to be a baroque palace on the other side of the lake, which Draco had almost mistaken for the Palace. The Grand Palace, where they had celebrated yesterday, lay behind the park. They could catch a glimpse of its entrance when they crossed the axis of the central alley.
"The librarian is Monsieur Videl," Klein said. "He was an astrologer or something back in his day. Be careful not to encourage him too much, or he will go on about stars forever. He means well, but he forgets that mortal humans have limited time."
"Why? Is he dead?"
"Totally," Klein said, "Though judging by his energy, you couldn't tell."
Klein kept filling them in on basic Beauxbatons geography and history as they passed interesting landmarks. The chateaux turned out to be houses. Yes. Beauxbatons houses, of which there were seven, were actual houses, or chateaux to be precise. A dorm with a mountain view and as many hours of sunlight as the latitude would afford! Draco thought of years spent in a cold dungeon with fake windows, and couldn't help resenting his place of birth a little.
"If you've been wondering which house Seba's in, right here is the answer," Klein pointed to an octagonal architectonic monster made of huge glass panels penetrated by the rays of the morning sun. Inside there was a jungle. "Our greenhouses. Seba lives there, basically."
Seba silently rolled his eyes.
"What?" Klein said. "Everyone's wondering if you'd secretly taken root in that mandrake patch."
They walked through the park, which seemed much larger than last night, now that they were crossing it on foot. The azure walls of the Palace shone against the white of the snow. They retraced their steps back to the hall. Now that it was light and they were sober, it looked quite different.
In the centre stood a table laden with countless marmalades, croissants, and pains aux chocolat. Small round tables were scattered across the hall, students of all ages buzzed around, shooting curious looks at him and Potter.
"Look, they've even served churros because of you guys," said Klein, pouring himself a cup of milk.
"They always serve churros on Christmas day," said Seba, arranging their plates and cups on a table near a tall window.
As much as Draco appreciated churros, after the excesses of last night, he sorely missed a greasy fry-up. But the most savoury thing on offer was a dish of tomatoes, which some weirdos rubbed onto slices of toast, turning the beautiful red fruit into a crinkled booger.
"Do you always stay for the Christmas break?" Potter asked Seba.
"I have, the last couple of years. I must take care for my plants." Seba's accent was almost perfect, but his grammar had a peculiar foreign flavour. He opened his mouth to add something, but Klein was quicker.
"Yeah. Otherwise the wood nymphs come raid the greenhouses at midnight on New Year's Eve, dig out all his mandrakes, and drug them with absinthe."
"Not wood nymphs!" With an embarrassed look, Seba picked a small creature that had dropped from the ceiling and overturned his plate, leaving his apricot jam sandwich jam down. He made a move to use his napkin to wipe her feet, which looked like the roots of a bonsai tree. But the creature startled and backed off, leaving a stripe of orange footprints on the table cloth, then fled, like a locust, in a single leap to the windowsill. "Not wood nymphs, but Tentirujus. And they don't—"
"Tenti-whats?"
"Tentirujus. Spanish, sort of, elves?" Seba said and continued cleaning the mess after the clumsy wood nymph. Only when he noticed the intrigued look on Potter's face did he finally realise that the topic of the Tenti-somethings was not exhausted yet. "They used to live in the Spanish part of the campus, but since—"
"Spanish part of the campus?"
"Yeah!" said Klein, dipping his croissant in his milk. "See that blue signpost over there? That's Spain." He pointed towards the alley outside the window, which turned into a path that fell slowly into a lower valley. The roof of a large country house stuck out behind a blue shield not much bigger than a Muggle road sign. "That's Masia Moriciego, a student house. Best female Quidditch players at Beauxbatons. The Masia and the Quidditch pitch lie entirely on the Spanish side."
Draco threw a glance across the national border and Beauxbatons grew even bigger in his mind. Potter continued asking questions.
"So the Tenti—"
"—rujus."
"What's wrong with them?"
"Nothing wrong, I guess," Seba said. "But since Schengen, they've stopped keeping to the Spanish side and started walking over to France, which is where—"
"Since what?"
"Since Schengen. Schengen?"
An awkward silence fell over the breakfast table. Seba inhaled to speak, but Klein was quicker again.
"You don't know Schengen? What do they teach you in Muggle Studies?" He looked like the milk dripping from his croissant had turned to Bubotuber pus.
"Muggle education and protection for Squib children," said Potter.
"Have you even heard of the EU?" Klein said, as if Squib children were completely irrelevant.
"Yes," but Draco's answer sank in Seba's hushed tirade:
"Hey, laat ze met rust! Wat verwacht je?"
"Funktionnell Alphabetiséierung!"
"Doe maar 'n beetje beleefd tegen de gasten, okay?" Seba turned to Draco again. "Sorry. The Schengen Agreement. A few European states met in Schengen and agreed that Muggles could cross the borders without having to show their passports. It's hardly a concern for us, of course."
Draco shifted in his chair. His muscles were still sore after hours spent in his own satchel yesterday. No passports. Excellent idea.
"But," Potter continued the interview, "what about the Tentiru—?"
"—jus. Yeah. They're weird." Seba shrugged. "They used to stay sit in the Masia. Not that they couldn't cross over to France, but it didn't occur to them. Now, after all the talk about open borders, they got the idea. And they discovered my— the greenhouses—"
Klein went to fetch some more churros, but was stopped by a girl with sparkling blue hair, and didn't hurry to rejoin them.
"—and started to pick at the mandrakes," Seba finished his thought.
The hall rang with francophone sing-song. Draco could guess why Maxime had picked these two to chaperone them. They were probably the only ones in the room who could pronounce the English aspirated 'h'.
"So that Schengen thing, who else is in it? You're Dutch right? Is—?"
"The Netherlands, yes. Belgium, Germany..."
"The UK?"
"No."
"Where was Klein from again? Is Luxembourg in Schengen?"
Seba hushed him, threw a wary look at Klein, who was still chatting with the girl, and lowered his voice:
"Schengen is in Luxembourg."
The library looked more like a ballroom than Hogwarts' dingy refuge for bookworms which smelled like dust and exam anxiety. This library was flooded with sunlight. The windows stretched from the parquet floor, which gleamed like polished amber, all the way to the ceiling, where images of antique gods and classical philosophers soared in the serenity of the painted sky. They were engaged in leisurely conversations, but Draco could neither hear their voices nor make out the looks on their faces from the distance of four floors of galleries. Behind curved mahogany railings, bookshelves stretched along the walls at all the four levels. The ground floor housed a study hall with wooden desks covered with inlaid ornaments. Draco let his finger slide over the smooth surface in passing.
If he had made better progress in French, would his father have considered sending him here? He would have even put up with the continental breakfast! But Beauxbatons had never been discussed as an option. Hogwarts or Durmstrang. One dimmer than the other.
"Monsieur Videl!" shouted Seba. "Vous avez des visiteurs de marque!" He waited a little. "Monsieur Videl!"
Nothing suggested that Seba's call had been heard. No answer, no approaching steps, nothing but a faint whiff of cold breeze.
"He'll be here in a minute," Seba said, and excused himself on the account of his vegetable wards. They were left alone waiting, listening to the silence and peering into the endless succession of halls that opened into one another, like in a mirror facing another mirror. Until a voice above their heads made them jump.
"Messieurs?"
A transparent shape of a man in a long sleeveless overgown and a square beret blended in with the rays of the morning light and was barely visible.
"Harry Potter," said Potter, and pointed at Draco as an afterthought.
"So I've been told. Honoured to meet you, Monsieur Potter, truly honoured," the ghost said to Draco.
"And Draco Malfoy," Draco reciprocated Potter's gesture.
Monsieur Videl gave him a long dreamy look.
"Mmmhhhmmm, Draco Malfoy," he pronounced slowly, savouring every word, "What a name! Draco. The third northernmost constellation of the night sky. Not the brightest, but with some unique history. If you care to learn more about your name, Monsieur, our library has an excellent Astronomy section, which I dearly recommend."
"I do, sir," said Potter, "but we're slightly more interested in the last name. Malfoy."
"Malfoy. Hmmmm."
"Herman Malfoy, to be precise," Draco said, "He joined the English campaign of William, the Duke of Normandy, in 1066."
"Herman Malfoy..." Monsieur Videl looked slightly less interested. "Was he a wizard?"
"Yes!" The answer exploded on Draco's lips. Honestly, what kind of question was that?
"How do you spell it?"
"M-A-L-F-O-O-Y-Y," they shot out in unison, but got out of sync on the O.
"Herman Malfoy," Monsieur Videl pronounced pensively again, but this time in a French manner. Herman's first name sounded more like Armand, and his last name more like Malwa. "Malfoy. Does not strike me as a wizard name."
"Pardon?" said Draco. Never before had he heard anything so ridiculous.
"Are you sure he was a wizard?"
"Yes," Potter said coolly, while Draco was trying to find his tongue, which seemed to have disapparated.
The librarian shot upwards and hovered at the level of the first floor gallery. Draco and Harry stared at him from below as he glided along the rows of books peering at the titles.
"Here!" he stopped suddenly and looked down at them over the railing. "You do have to come up here to pick it up, Messieurs. A couple of hands would be handy."
The wooden steps squeaked under their feet, as they hurried upstairs. Videl was pointing at a thick volume, the tip of his finger sank through the leather cover.
"Le sang sorcier, A comprehensive guide to wizard genealogies since the age of Charlemagne. You can give it a try if you are so sure." Videl obviously didn't share their certainty.
As Potter pulled the book out of the shelf, Videl seeped through the floor under their feet and reappeared downstairs, the length of three bookshelves further down the hall. He hung in front of a crystal ball like the one in the Malfoy library.
"Malfoy, Malfoy," he sang, peering into the ball.
He must have found the name, because two rays of light issued out of the ball: A thin golden string, no thicker than a needle, pointed to the volume in Potter's hands. See! The other beam, thick as a handle of a broomstick, crossed the hall diagonally and pierced into a section on the third floor.
"Ha! That's what I thought," said Videl. "Malfoy's in the section for Muggle Studies."
What studies?
Draco glanced with hope at the golden thread touching the volume Potter was holding, wrenched the book out of his hands, and pressed it to his chest.
"Was Herman Malfoy Muggle-born? Interesting." Potter said with such a grin that Draco would have happily smashed the ten pounds of wizard genealogy into his face, if his hands hadn't suddenly turned so numb.
"Don't. Jump. To conclusions!" The air in his lungs stalled and words came out voiceless.
"Are you coming, gentlemen?" Videl's voice sounded from the third floor gallery.
"Draco, it's okay to be Muggle-born, or half-blood for that matter." Potter stopped grinning.
"Since when it's 'Draco', Potter?"
"Sorry, Malfoy. You just look like you're about to faint."
"I'm not about to faint, and you don't mother me!" Draco felt his feet float somewhat to his left. As there was nothing to sit down on, he leaned against the nearest book shelf. "What are you staring at? Go get that bloody book from the Muggle section!"
"Please?"
"F—!"
Without waiting for a proper 'please', Potter trotted upstairs and disappeared with Monsieur Videl among the shelves at the third level.
One, two, three, Draco came back to the vertical position and stumbled down to the ground floor. He slammed 'Le Sang Sorcier' onto one of the desks, and opened it at a random place.
A huge family tree cramped into a single page was the first thing he saw. The text was so tiny his eyes started to water, but when he touched the parchment with his trembling fingers the words grew to a readable size.
La noble famille de Harivel. He turned a few pages. Hautecloque. He jumped half an inch further down the stack of yellowish pages. Magand. Malafosse. Malecrit. Meurdrac. No Malfoy.
The golden thread from the crystal ball still beamed faintly at the book. Malfoy had to be in there somewhere! If not one of the big houses worthy of its own page, then, perhaps, a side branch in somebody else's tree? But the trees came in hundreds. They'd need a year to search the jungle.
In the meantime, Potter was back with a tome from the Muggle section and a concerned look.
"It's all in French."
Of course, it was all in French! What had he expected?
The book took its place on the desk next to 'Le sang sorcier'.
Le fer et l'or – Une histoire complète du commerce sorciers-moldus en Europe
"Complete history of commerce something in Europe? I guess?" said Potter.
"Wizard-muggle trade. Iron and gold." Draco puzzled the title together with what scraps of French he could find in his memory.
He opened the book and started scanning the table of contents. He skipped the Greeks and the Romans, wandered slowly over Charlemagne and stopped at High Middle Ages. One and a half pages were packed with thin lines listing the sections and the subsections. They should have brought Granger.
"Wait," Potter stopped his hand, when he was about to turn the page, "There was something." He was hanging over his right shoulder and Monsieur Videl over his left, which created an uncomfortable contrast in temperature. "Normandy something?"
Before Draco could find the line, Monsieur Videl offered a translation:
"Metallurgy in Normandy under William the Bastard."
"Sounds like a place to start?" Potter pulled the book to his side and flipped to the section. "You read the left side, I read the right side. That'll be faster."
"I didn't know you could read French." Draco adjusted his glasses.
"Well, there is only one French word we're interested in, right? And that one I can read."
They started scouring the pages for the M-word, but Draco could barely keep up. Years of his father's insistent attempts to have him learn French now got into the way. There were too many words and he kept stumbling over them. Words that caught his eye, words that rang a bell, words that reminded him of his French teacher's priceless expression when he tried to look serious, words that he was supposed to remember but didn't, because even for Monsieur de Blessis French was not the highest priority. His contract stated eight hours of French and two hours of dance per week, but to Draco's delight, it was secretly the other way around, until— The word savaient dashed into focus and kept Draco from moving on. Savaient. Knew.
Draco had been in a strange mood that day. Distracted. Dreamy. They were practising that bloody turn, and he was too slow again. Blessis's leg got caught between his, and then he knew it. All of a sudden, Draco knew why he liked dancing so much more than French. And somehow he also knew at once that he'd better not tell his father. Blessis let go of him abruptly, his usually rosy cheeks now the colour of his teaching contract. He knew it, too.
For the next two weeks it was all French and no dance. Draco played the diligent student and even did all his homework. Seriously. It was nothing! What was all the fuss about? But Blessis now always made sure that he sat at the farthest side from him across the table and constantly avoided his eye.
"Let me introduce you to Madame Carabin, your new French teacher," said Lucius, when Draco entered the drawing room the following Monday. A short witch in her fifties was sitting next to his father. She stared at him as if he was some holy grail beset with diamonds (he was, of course), with a grin so wide a crêpe could be inserted into her mouth unfolded. Draco looked at the golden squares of sunlight on the floor. The weather was great for Quidditch. No, he didn't like French at all.
When Draco attention returned to the book, Videl and Potter were poring over a page under a promising heading. Le scandale Loubert–Malfoy. Why did there always have to be a scandal?
"Hmmmm. Interesting. Very interesting."
"What is so interesting, sir?" Potter asked.
"The Louberts were great sorcerers! They still are, as it were, even if they walk under other names these days. The name Loubert disappeared in the male line around nineteen hundred." Monsieur Videl hovered above the desk.
"A great many enchanted artefacts bestowed with extraordinary powers came from Loubert workshops."
Harry and Draco exchanged glances.
"Most famous are Louberts' bonding rings."
"Bonding?"
"Wedding rings that strengthen and perpetuate the love bond of a couple. Our most renowned colleagues, Monsieur and Madame Flamel are— were owners of a Loubert pair." Videl sighed.
"That was much later, I suppose?" Draco said.
"Yes. Fourteenth century," said Monsieur Videl. "If we look deeper into the past, then it's mostly armour and weaponry. Indestructible swords. Several were wielded by the knights of Charlemagne. The attempts to destroy one of them are immortalised in the shape of these very mountains."
"Did they make any famous lockets?" Potter said.
"Definitely. 'Annales de la magie appliquée' catalogues hundreds of their creations. We should also have a few titles in the Alchemy section that detail their most significant alchemic innovations. Would you like to look at those works?"
"Er."
"What did they have to do with the Malfoys?" Draco said, his eyes still glued to the word 'scandale'.
Monsieur Videl swerved around and seated himself on the bench between them, paying little attention to the circumstance that his ghostly outlines were now cutting straight through Harry's and Draco's flesh.
"Mmhh hmm. It seems, the Malfoys started out as their ore suppliers. Iron is iron. Just as good on the Muggle market." Videl continued reading in silence. He stretched out his finger to the corner of the page but it sank through the parchment. "Will you be so kind to turn the page for me, Monsieur Malfoy."
Potter turned the page and Videl continued reading.
"Ah," he finally came back after another long silence, "They shifted focus to blacksmithing by the end of the tenth century and later specialised in blades. They made quite a name in the trade by the time of the scandal."
"So, the Malfoys and the Louberts began to, er, compete?"
"Hardly. They served different segments of the market, as they say these days. Loubert swords were unbeaten and famous all over Normandie and Bretagne. Great lords would shower gold and gems on them to obtain a better sword than their covetous neighbour. The Malfoys made decent and affordable weapons for their squires and footmen. What they lost in quality, they gained back in quantity. With all the unrest and war at the time, both houses were quite wealthy."
"So where was the problem?"
Videl pored over the pages for a while before he spoke.
"Well. Shortly before the death of King Edward and William's campaign to claim his throne, the Malfoys suddenly started to produce better swords. The Rouen guild of smiths subjected them to thorough examination and acknowledged their superior quality. And the Malfoys started boasting that the steel in their blades was no less strong than Louberts', which was eagerly exaggerated by malicious tongues. Soon a rumour was afoot that the new Malfoy swords could crush Louberts to powder. So the guild masters became alarmed and almost threw the Malfoys out of the guild for the use of magic."
"Why?"
"Because wizard craftsmen had their own guilds. If the Malfoys used magic in the process then the usual Muggle quality controls did not apply to them. Then they belonged in a different department."
"Okay..."
"So, apparently, they had Malfoy blades checked again. No traces of magic use were found."
"What does all this have to do with the Louberts then?"
Videl went back to reading. Potter kept turning the pages on command, until Videl finally gave a loud sigh and a long hum, raising his eyes from the parchment.
"A year later, William sought to re-equip his infantry, and having heard of the Malfoys' better but still rather affordable swords, he ordered a large batch from them and advised his followers to do the same. There were reports that once he personally visited the Malfoy smithy. Nothing definite is known about what happened during that visit, but he returned with a puncture in his hauberk, in amused spirits, and soon afterwards broke off all his pending deals with the Louberts."
"What does that mean?"
"They must have been testing Malfoy blades. The damage to the chainmail spoke in their favour."
"Okay." Draco said. "But what is so scandalous about it? The Malfoys just brought a better product to the market."
"Ha! That's the thing! The Malfoys were Muggles. Muggle technology at the time could not provide that perfect balance of iron and carbon that makes out high quality steel. Magic could. They might have managed to fool their guild masters, but for the real insider there was no doubt: If not their swords, their materials were a product of powerful sorcery.
"And secondly, what they brought to the market were weapons for the lesser folk. They were better than those from other Muggle swordsmiths, but they were still no match for a Loubert sword. What Malfoy promised William to make him quit all the deals with Loubert must have been quite extraordinary.
"At any rate, when the rumour spread among the witches and wizards in the region, everyone thought the Malfoys 'stole' Loubert's magic. This was complete nonsense, of course. Muggles cannot steal magic. More likely, the Malfoys had kidnapped a witch or a wizard, and a good one at that, and made them work the necessary magic for them."
"Or their own child was one," said Potter.
"Possible, though unlikely," said Videl. "This school did not exist in those days. Witches and wizards were educated at home. Muggle-borns did not have the benefit of magical education. Even if your Herman Malfoy were born a wizard, he would have hardly had the opportunity to polish his skills to the necessary degree."
"Unless he was educated by the Louberts themselves," said Potter.
"Maybe, maybe. Don't overestimate them though. Old families had always been wary of Muggle-borns. Until the age of enlightenment."
Videl turned to the book again. Draco stared into the text, and the text stared back at him unyieldingly. His thoughts were quicker than his eyes. Either the Louberts were total idiots to raise a Muggle-born traitor in their own smithy, or Herman Malfoy was not a Malfoy at all. The second possibility held rather more appeal.
"The Malfoys were on everyone's lips for the next couple of years," Videl spoke again, when Draco was sure they had hit the end of the story, "but what is remarkable is that their production of high quality swords stopped in 1066 after William left for England, and their reputation in the trade suffered great damage. Whoever did the magic for them must have left with William."
When they walked back to the guest house, it was dark, but the sky was clear. Draco spotted Ursa Major from the corner of his eye, but did not bother to look for his namesake. The old snow covering the path had melted under the day's sun and was now turning into a hard ice crust.
"Why couldn't the Louberts have taught magic to Herman Malfoy?" Potter just wouldn't let it go. "I mean, they were big, right? They couldn't have done all the work themselves, they must have had apprentices! And then it turns out that the son of their business partners has a real knack for it?"
"They weren't business partners. They were competition."
"What about the ore supplies?"
"Yes, a hundred years before they were partners. Then they were in competition."
They were walking past the greenhouses, which were illuminated on the inside—a glowing island of tropical summer amidst the dark landscape of alpine snow. Once, Draco thought he caught a glimpse of Seba's golden buzz cut between the green and purple lianas. When they left the greenhouses behind, the path before them seemed even darker.
"I don't believe able wizards were easy to find," Potter said. "And then up pops an apprentice who can actually do stuff. I'd have a hard time saying no."
"Why do you want Herman to be Muggle-born so much?"
"I don't want him to be Muggle-born. He was! I mean, the Malfoys were Muggles, and Herman was a wizard. I just put two and two together and—"
"And jump to unwarranted conclusions!" There were still a few unknowns in the equation. The golden thread from the crystal ball to the wizard genealogy book did not leave Draco in peace.
"You just refuse to accept the obvious." The Observatory was now looming in the distance and the path began to rise. Potter lit up his wand. "Malfoy, it's okay! Herman was Muggle-born, you're half-blood. Big deal."
For a moment, Draco imagined the headlines of the Daily Prophet when the news leaked to the press. 'Malfoy: The hypocrites of the millennium', 'Malfoy: Mudblood Death Eaters', 'Malfoy: Fake since 1066'. And then the reporters: "When you were torturing Muggle-borns, did you know the first Malfoy was one?" "Would you have delivered your ancestor to the Muggle-born registration commission?" "How long have you known?"
Potter was going on and on about blood, as they climbed the stairs to the Observatory, but his words sounded emptier and emptier. Draco stopped paying attention.
Did his father know? Was it one of those things he conveniently chose to forget? With a shock Draco realised that he had slipped into thinking that it was true, and gave himself a mental smack. No. They didn't know anything yet. Herman could have been anything.
Potter kept dropping words like 'stigma' and 'identity', as they left their boots in the hallway raining melted snow onto the carpet and moved to the privacy of their room to rid themselves of the rest of the clothing. Could Potter even understand what those words meant to a wizard? It was not until both of them lay in bed for a while, the candle on the bedside table still burning, that Draco realised that Potter had finally shut up, and it felt almost like something was missing.
Potter lay on his back, staring at the enchanted ceiling, one arm under his head. The occasional grey veil of a cloud pulled quickly across the patch of black sky above them, only to reveal the unperturbed cold shine of the stars again and again.
"When you realised that you're gay, were you as pig-headed as you are now?"
"Wha—?" Draco wondered what he had missed.
"When you realised that you're gay, did you try to convince yourself that you weren't?"
"I always knew I'm gay!" That was almost true. The episode with Blessis had not been a surprise, it just had sealed the deal, but— Draco was puzzled now. How had they got there? What was it Potter had been saying about stigma?
"Hm," Potter uttered, sighed, opened and closed his mouth a few times. The flame of the candle shuddered. "May I ask you something personal?"
"Wow! Now you've been going on about my personal business for hours, you finally ask!"
"It's not about blood."
"Well?"
Potter blinked, inhaled a few times, exhaled again without saying anything, gave Draco a quick nervous look, swallowed, inhaled again and finally spoke.
"When you were in the Room of Requirement with Ginny, and she... you know. You didn't feel anything, right?"
"Oh, I felt loads! I was terrified like—"
"No, I don't mean that, I—"
"No, I didn't feel attracted to her, if that's what you mean."
Where was this going?
"And other times, when you were practising Quidditch, or dancing, for instance?"
"No. Are you still worried? Ginevra is as safe with me as a Galleon in Gringotts," Draco said. "And after our last conversation, I'm safe too, I believe."
"So you still only like boys? With my scar and everything?"
"How would your scar prevent me from only liking boys?"
"I'm just wondering. That means that our attractions, they are basically in our mind, or our soul, or, whatever, the thing that is you, or me. Because if they were in our body then you would now be attracted to Ginny, right?"
"I suppose so. Why?"
"No, it's just weird."
Potter fell silent again, and Draco should have used the moment to put out the candle and give his full attention to nightmares about Herman's parents, but his stomach gave a churn, and before he could stop himself, "Why?"
Every muscle in Potter's face tensed.
"Well. When Ewen was leaving for the Christmas holidays, we said goodbye and he gave me a hug. It was just a... hug. But I reacted, like, er, physically."
A hug. Draco wasn't sure yet what the sudden bloom of frost in his chest meant, but he regretted that he'd asked, and felt an irresistible urge to annoy Potter back.
"So, Ewen kissed you and you had an erection?"
Potter's face went stiff, as if he was struggling with a severe case of constipation.
"Yes."
Fleeting satisfaction swept past, but the frost stayed.
"So, I'm wondering," Potter continued, "Is this me? Or is this just your—" and he gestured in the direction of his middle covered with the duvet. Draco let his gaze slide to the spot Potter was pointing to.
"You fascinate me, Potter. You say V— You say 'Voldemort' like it was nothing, but you can't muster the courage to say 'penis'?"
"I can say 'penis' if necessary," Potter said, although his voice did break somewhat on the word in question, "It's not just the penis that I mean. It's the whole system."
"System. Aha."
"Because otherwise, if it's all just in our mind, then does it mean now that I'm— that I'm into boys?"
"You could be into boys and girls. Nothing wrong with that," Draco said, and wished he had Potter's problems.
"It's just too much of a coincidence, you know. Never had anything like that before, and now when I'm sitting in your body, this happens!"
Draco couldn't help smiling a frosty inward smile.
"Maybe that's just because I'm so totally gay and you're so totally oblivious that my blueprint, sort of, dominates?"
Potter snarled something unintelligible and pulled the duvet over his head. The candle flickered and the shadows on the walls jerked wildly left and right.
"I don't understand why you are so upset about it. You've just been going on about how pig-headed I am, that I cannot accept that Herman was, allegedly, Muggle-born. Now, that's about my origin. That's about who I really am! And you have what? An issue with my attractions? If I start about my issues with your— well. Anyway. Think of it as wearing a new set of dressrobes."
Potter's growl was muffled by layers of down and cotton.
"No, really. Speaking of big deals, what's the big deal?"
"What's the big deal?!" Potter's exasperated face emerged from under the duvet, "Well! I have to deal with your erections and your penis somehow!"
The flame of the candle guttered aside and almost went out.
"Don't you complain about my penis, Potter! That," Draco pointed to the spot where the subject of the conversation was hidden, "is the best penis in the world. Enjoy as long as you have it!"
"Thanks!" Potter huffed and turned to the wall.
Another grey cloud dashed past. The stars must have moved a tiny little bit against the spin of the Earth, but that was beyond a mortal human's naked eye.
"Oh god. You don't have to enjoy it if you don't want to."
"I do want to, damn it!" Potter virtually jumped upright as he turned around.
"Well then! Lucky you! You want it, he wants it too, apparently. Where's the problem?"
"He wants you."
"He wants it."
"He wants it with you."
"Potter, don't make it too complicated. You're good enough for the time being. You've managed on the dance floor, you'll manage—"
"What do you mean 'for the time being'? Did you hope I'd keep him warm for you until we retransfigure or what?"
Draco had not thought of it that way, but Potter's words slapped him in the face. Maybe that was exactly what he had hoped.
"Ewen has the right to know who he is kissing. If I'm saying 'yes' to this, I'm doing it as Harry Potter!"
Draco lay on his back and stared at the enchanted ceiling. The stars shone down on him mercilessly from the black sky. The duvet had lost the fight against the frost in his chest. It was Christmas. Their secrecy deal had expired.
Note: A disclaimer: The joke about Schengen and Luxembourg is an old Luxembourgian joke from the 1990s, when the Schengen agreement was still a relatively new thing. So it's not of my creation. But since Luxembourgian humour is probably not the most famous internationally, I thought there is no harm in giving it some publicity in this fic.
