"Incendio."
"Lighters and matches."
"Petrificus Totalus."
"Tranquilizer dart guns."
"Alohomora."
"A pair of hairpins in a pair of able hands."
"Accio."
"I see no reason why you shouldn't just get up and get the thing yourself."
"Typical muggle. Fine, Bombarda."
"Oh, so many. Hand grenades, dynamite, nuclear bombs. Pick your flavour."
"Imperio."
"Good old-fashioned blackmail."
"Bat-Bogey Hex."
"What's that?"
"Literally what it says. A hex that turns the victim's boogers into bats."
"Didn't we agree to stick to things that are actually used in real life?"
"Can't tell you how many times a certain redhead tried to use this hex on me, but whatever. Wingardium Leviosa."
"Depends on what needs to be lifted. I'll go with cranes."
"What's that?"
"Cranes are big machines with, uh, long metal arms. They lift and move heavy things that are hooked onto them."
"No, it's different. You're talking about weights being attached to something and lifted, not floating by themselves."
"Your spell doesn't make things float by themselves either. Your magic lifts them."
"Salazar help me. Well, guess what. I know something that muggles absolutely cannot do: fly."
"Actually, they can."
There was a pause.
"What?!" exclaimed Draco.
"Have you never heard of planes, or helicopters, or rockets? Ah, why do I even ask—of course, you haven't." Ruth rubbed her eyelids. "People can fly without magic. Every day, they fly over seas and over mountains, from one continent to another. People have even been to the Moon, all without magic."
Draco's eyes drilled into her back as she turned to stir the soup. He himself sat rigidly in his wooden chair on the opposite side of the kitchen.
"You're lying," he said.
"Why would I lie about something like that?"
"To make me look like a gullible buffoon, obviously."
"You're doing a fine job of that yourself, you know."
"Oh, shut it."
Draco would've come up with a more acerbic retort, had he not been so lost in thought. After half a minute, his eyes refocused, and he shook his head. "I don't believe you. A small device that lets you talk to someone over long distances? All right. Weirdly shaped boxes that display an hour-long photo? Fine. An invisible network storing all possible information, accessible through other strange boxes? Whatever rows your boat. But now you're just making stuff up. The Moon is—"
"Please don't tell me you believe the Moon is a goddess."
"What? No!" Draco said indignantly. "It's just impossible. There is no wizard, alive or dead, who could Apparate all the way to the Moon."
"So you're saying muggles are capable of something that wizards absolutely cannot do?" There was a hint of glee in Ruth's voice.
"I missed the part where you actually proved this to me."
"I suppose I could get you a book on space travel—"
Draco scoffed. "A book will not convince me of a lie so preposterous."
"I said I could, but I'm not going to. I have a better idea."
Ruth stopped stirring and looked up in contemplation. A big wooden spoon froze in her hand.
"It might not convince you," she said slowly. "It's only a film, and you'd be right not to believe everything they show you on television. But this one is based on real-life events. And if you don't take my word for it, well... I still have to show you this film. It's one of my favourites."
"What are you rambling about?"
Ruth met his gaze and bit her lower lip. Her eyes sparkled.
"We're going to see Apollo 13."
And they did. The closest date was two weeks away, on the twenty-second of September—exactly two years after the film's initial release in the UK. It was fortunate, Ruth had said, that the anniversary was near; otherwise, there might not have been any more showings for months.
Draco was still sceptical about the whole affair when the day finally arrived. To his dismay, they had to go to Norwich by bus. However, this time around, with cooler weather, a newer bus, and a much shorter distance, the ride was almost tolerable.
After asking a couple of strangers for directions, Ruth—who looked nothing like Ruth at the moment—led Draco to a modest building with a large, illuminated sign above the double doors that read "The Classic Cinema". They entered the lobby, the walls of which were covered in static posters of all kinds, and approached the counter, where a Confunded woman very kindly agreed to provide them with tickets and strange muggle snacks. She then pointed them to the "auditorium", which turned out to be a dimly lit room with tiered seating arranged in rows. All seats faced a large white rectangle stretched across the wall. Draco and Ruth took their seats in the second row and waited as people slowly trickled in. She began eating the small orange clusters from the colourful bucket and held it out to him, but he waved it off with a grimace.
Suddenly, the lights went out.
Draco turned to Ruth, his fingers seizing the tip of his wand. "What's happening?"
"Relax." She chuckled. "The film is about to begin."
A whirring sound filled the air, discernible amidst the noise of people settling into their seats. The white rectangle in front of them flickered and came alive with the first images. A hush fell over the audience, and Draco held his breath.
A man's voice echoed from somewhere, "Flight. We have the crew crossing gantry for capsule ingress."
And for the next two hours, Draco's eyes, charmed to appear dark brown, remained fixed on the changing images in front of him. This was unlike any magical photograph he'd seen before.
Every so often, Ruth leaned closer and whispered to him, explaining the technical details and plot points.
"That's NASA, the brightest minds of all mankind. Non-magical mankind, at least."
"They need to reach a certain speed to get through the stratosphere."
"Here, the oxygen leak is particularly critical. It's not just breathing oxygen—it's also the fuel that powers the spacecraft."
At times, Draco felt torn between her commentary and the actual film dialogue.
The distant Earth, as presented in the film, was a sight to behold. So was the Moon up close. Draco was glued to the white screen and entranced by it. As the events unfolded further, he found himself holding his breath, faintly shuddering, and even gripping the edge of his seat. No book or play had ever held him in such suspense.
Halfway through the film, his hand instinctively reached for the bucket. The snack tasted like caramel and was actually edible, if only a bit sticky.
Draco sighed in relief when the heroes finally made their safe return to Earth. The closing speech reminded him that the film was allegedly based on real-life events. It couldn't possibly be true. It just couldn't. The idea that people could end up stranded in the boundless expanse of space, with no means of returning home, was profoundly unsettling. On the other hand, the notion that a group of muggles, no matter how exceptional, could be ingenious enough to bring them back without using magic seemed plainly unimaginable.
When they exited the cinema, Draco was still speechless. Ruth gave him a subtle smile.
"If you're interested," she said, "we can get you a book on space travel, while we're in the city. And if that also fails to convince you... Well, even some non-magical people find it hard to believe, though they're a minority and mostly the sort of people who live for conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, I can't offer you a spot on a rocket and launch you to space. What I can do is get you an airplane ticket. That is, when... when this is all over."
Ruth trailed off and grew quiet. She must have realized the absurdity of those last words. Draco said nothing.
Merlin, if this was real...
Spaceships, moon landings, airplanes, omniscient computers, weapons that could raze the entire planet... If all of this was real, it would mean muggles were actually superior to wizards in some respects. But it couldn't be! Could it?
No. That wouldn't make muggles better than magical folk, but one would certainly have to declare them more technologically advanced. There was no place or demand for technology in Wizarding Britain, so there couldn't really be any competition.
Still, the moon landing feat, if real, was quite impressive.
"I think I'd like to read a book about space travel after all," he said.
They swung by a bookstore and nicked one. Draco spent the entire journey home devouring its pages. Every picture and every word captivated him. He had to admit, it was all rather convincing. If this was, in the end, only a conspiracy, it would take the world's most worthy Slytherin to pull it off.
With everything Draco had learned about muggles, their world did seem like an alternate universe. Even though people on both sides seemed to experience the same emotions and hold similar values at their core—family, friends, good reputation—the way they went about their lives differed vastly.
Both universes just... worked. Science and technology suited muggles, while magic and ancient traditions suited wizards. It was the way things were always meant to be.
Muggleborns should've simply stuck to their ever-changing homeland. They shouldn't have immigrated to the wizarding world built by pureblood families. They shouldn't have changed their institutions for the worse—without any qualms, too—leaving purebloods jobless and bitter. They shouldn't have married into ancient houses, disregarding wizarding customs.
Muggleborns were ruining centuries of tradition, while people like Grindelwald and Voldemort, under the guise of restoring old glory, were destroying it completely.
This conclusion felt satisfactory enough. After surviving an earthquake, a tornado, and a flood, Draco's mental house of cards had finally regained its delicate equilibrium. But the newfound balance was precarious, and Draco dared not disturb it with the question lurking in the shadows of his mind:
How much was tradition worth, anyway?
September merged into October, and the days, born late and quick to die, shrank even further beneath the ceaseless rain. Despite it all, Draco and Ruth's training regimen only got more gruelling. They began each day meditating in the early hours before sunrise. Afterward, they dedicated time to practicing both wanded and wandless magic, occasionally interspersed with gun shooting—in which Draco made significant progress. This was followed by a series of physical exercises, more meditating, and a few hours of well-deserved rest. After that they practiced duelling with each other well into the darkness. The old barn, though magically fortified and cleaned, wasn't ideal for their practice, but it was preferable to training outside under the pouring rain.
The Death Eaters' wands definitely didn't want Ruth anywhere near them, but her unyielding determination seemed to force at least Flint's wand into hesitant cooperation. If wands were sentient, Draco would say she was slowly winning it over. If only too slowly.
When Ruth wasn't training, she was studying. Meditation alone wasn't enough to master wandless magic; her theoretical understanding of levitation and summoning also seemed to have played a significant role in her earlier success. For that reason, achieving further progress proved difficult without additional reading. So she read, and when her limited textbooks failed to answer her questions, she turned to Draco. That is, when she could find him; and she often couldn't. He would return sometime later, water dripping from his clothes and forming puddles beneath him. She would give him a look, and he would offer no explanations, walking past her to his room with a varying degree of gloom on his face.
It happened so often that when, on one October evening, she knocked on his door, hoping to discuss the possible ways the Stunning Spell inhibits neural activity, she wasn't the least bit surprised to find his room empty.
Less than thirty miles from the farm, amid eroding stones and crumbled walls, a tall, cloaked figure materialized out of thin air. Within seconds, the heavy rain drenched the cloak, as well as the white hair concealed beneath the hood. A pale arm, covered to the knuckles by black sleeves, raised a wand and quickly drew a pattern in the air. Barely visible waves of energy pulsed from the tip of the wand, extending for a mile in every direction.
This charm was, in fact, completely unnecessary; for weeks now, Draco Malfoy had been the only person to visit the ruins of this small muggle castle.
Unbothered by the gathering thunderstorm, he walked over to the closest column—a robust structure, roughly one metre in diameter.
Draco gripped his wand with both hands, pointing at the top left corner of the column, and then moved it diagonally in a steady, controlled motion, murmuring the incantation, "Sectura Maxima."
A shimmering line delineated the path, dividing the column into two parts. The severed top slid down and fell to the ground with a thud.
The sky crackled and lit up. The steady drum of the rain grew louder, turning almost hysterical.
Having repaired the column, Draco moved to stand in front of a particularly thick wall. That was the real challenge—the one he had either failed or performed sloppily in his previous attempts. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Inhale. Exhale. Long inhale. Long exhale.
When Draco opened his eyes, they burned into the wall with determination. With both hands on his wand, he pointed it to the left and began slicing downward. The shimmering line followed the movement of his wand. After cutting three stones down, Draco changed direction, moving the wand horizontally to the right, then up, and finally to the left. Only then did he let his wand drop, panting from exertion. The shimmering line winked out and disappeared, leaving behind a visible cut line.
He took another deep breath, pointed his wand at the square piece, and shouted, "Depulso!" The stone mass pushed forward into the wall and fell away, leaving a square hole behind. After Draco regarded it with a scrutinizing gaze, his lips curled in satisfaction. He then repaired the wall, sliding the square piece back in place with effort, which was nothing compared to the challenge of actually cutting it out.
After that, he raised his wand to do it all over again.
An hour later, Draco stood in the same spot, bent in half, trying to catch his breath. Sweat trickled down his body, mixing with the rainwater. His clothes and skin felt absolutely soaked.
Three lightning bolts pierced the night sky at once, illuminating yet another magically created window. Draco stared at it. The casting had been perfect—silent and smooth, just like all the previous ones.
With a wide grin, he brandished his wand and repaired the wall for the final time.
That was it. He was ready.
A week later, during one of their extended breaks from training, Draco found Ruth in the living room, sitting on the couch and engrossed in the textbook on Defence Against the Dark Arts.
"I'm afraid our time together is coming to an end," he told her, sinking into an armchair.
She did not look up. "Homesick, Malfoy? Already?"
Draco raised his hand. Following the sound of something clattering in the kitchen, a green apple flew into his open palm. He smiled smugly at it.
"Thoughts of home do make me ill, if that's what you're asking. But, be that as it may, I cannot keep my parents waiting any longer."
"Got a plan?"
He Scourgified the apple with his wand and took a bite. "Of course. Since I won't be warmly received at home, I'll have to take a rather long detour first. That's why, in a week or so, I'm leaving for Hogwarts."
At this, Ruth tore her eyes away from the textbook and turned her gaze to Draco.
"You mean we are leaving for Hogwarts, right?"
"What?"
"I'm going with you, you thickhead."
He gave her a confused look. "Don't you want to stay and practice some more? You're not ready yet."
"Neither are you!" She scoffed and put her book away. "All this time, you've been telling me that my plan is a suicide mission, and yet, here you are, getting ready to walk blindly into—"
"No. You should stay here and continue honing your skills. The farmer won't be back until December, you'll have plenty of time."
"You promised me passage into Wizarding Britain."
"And I will leave you instructions on where and how to enter."
Ruth crossed her arms. "Malfoy Manor sounds like the perfect drop-off point to me."
"No, absolutely not. That's literally the Death Eaters' headquarters."
"Like I said, perfect."
Draco sighed loudly and covered his forehead with his free hand.
"It is," she insisted. "Where else would I find the final boss?"
"You're not listening. You won't even get the chance to off one of them, let alone the final boss."
"That's debatable."
The discussion was getting truly tedious. There was no way Draco would let her set foot inside Malfoy Manor.
"Why don't you stay at Hogwarts?" he said. "There should be plenty of Death Eaters there."
Ruth thinned her lips, studying the ceiling for a moment. Then her expression changed, and she said, "Including the new Headmaster, right?"
Draco groaned. "No, I need Snape. He's the most important part of my plan."
She seemed unconvinced.
"Look, if you start with Snape, you will end with Snape. And you will never get to anyone else from the inside of a casket. The more, the merrier, no?"
She rolled her eyes. "Fine."
He leaned back in his armchair, raised the apple to his lips, and then blinked.
"Wait a minute," he said slowly. "How did we go from you convincing me to take you along to me convincing you to go to Hogwarts?"
Ruth gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Common sense prevailed, I guess. You finally saw reason: an extra wand and an extra gun always come in handy."
Draco had to admit, she did have a point. His mission was beyond dangerous, and should anything go awry, he could really use whatever help she could offer.
He let out another long sigh and cast her a resigned, albeit extremely unhappy, look.
"Can you swim?"
When she nodded, he told her the plan.
Getting his parents out would not be easy, that much was clear. Draco needed an ally—someone on the inside, someone who could either discreetly smuggle his parents out or smuggle Draco in and assist him in their escape.
After much deliberation, he concluded that, despite having drifted apart from Blaise and Theo, he could probably still trust them. However, neither of them was an Occlumens, nor did they have a solid excuse for visiting Malfoy Manor. Snape checked both of these boxes, but he was a wild card.
Draco believed that the Potions professor liked him and perhaps even viewed him as a protégé—or at least he had, at one point. Snape had been relentless in offering his help during Draco's sixth year. While this could be easily attributed to the Unbreakable Vow, one had to wonder what compelled him to take such a Vow in the first place, if not a desire to keep his top student alive. Finally, there was no other reason for him to do what he did on the night of Dumbledore's death: advising Draco to keep his Occlumency shields up before the Dark Lord.
There was a possibility, however unlikely, that Snape would help him, and Draco was willing to take that chance. It was the best option he had anyway.
But first, he needed to reach him. The newspaper from Knockturn Alley had given Draco a valuable tip about Snape's whereabouts, which, of course, just had to be one of the most heavily defended magical places in Britain. However, the castle was not impregnable, as Draco himself had proven not so long ago. In fact, having spent an entire year plotting Hogwarts' infiltration, he happened to have a few ideas.
When Draco received his task, the Vanishing Cabinet was not his initial idea. He had long suspected that Potter was aware of at least one secret passageway leading out of Hogwarts. Unfortunately, extracting this information from the Golden Boy proved impossible. Draco was not a skilled Legilimens, and his few attempts at the spell had been anything but subtle, instantly alerting whichever Hogwarts student he targeted. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that even if he were to discover a passageway, there was no guarantee it wasn't being monitored. None of the existing passageways were absolutely safe for his purposes, which meant Draco had to create his own.
Inferring the link between two Vanishing Cabinets from Montague's ramblings felt like a stroke of genius, but repairing one proved to be far more challenging than Draco had anticipated. Several times, he nearly abandoned the idea altogether, and on one occasion, he even started developing a new plan as a backup.
This other passageway was neither neat, nor easy, nor safe, for that matter. Draco hadn't even mentioned it to the Death Eaters for fear of insulting them. In hindsight, he couldn't quite understand why he'd bothered putting in the effort at all. They would never have agreed to use this passageway; they simply hadn't been that desperate.
Now Draco... Draco was that desperate.
It all started one evening when, after yet another failure with the Cabinet, Draco sat in the Slytherin common room, idly gazing at the lake through the window. That evening, something peculiar caught his eye—a steady stream of bubbles rising from a shadowy crevice in the lakebed. The pattern in the water's currents seemed somewhat unusual, too. Draco leaned closer and watched the spot almost unblinkingly for half an hour until a small school of fish darted into the darkness and vanished.
A guess produced by his exhausted, sleep-deprived mind later turned out to be correct: there were underground caves beneath the Hogwarts grounds.
He pursued that thought. There was a small lake on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, just a few miles away from Hogwarts itself. Naturally, he began to wonder if the two lakes could possibly be connected.
During the Easter holidays, Draco took Gregory and Apparated them both to the small lake to test his theory, though it wasn't the only thing he wanted to test. His hunch didn't fail him: the caves, partially submerged underwater, indeed connected the two lakes. However, their exploration was cut short when Goyle, the idiot, gasped at the sight of a merperson skeleton, inhaled water, and began to choke. Draco had to save his useless arse. He would've taken Theo or Blaise—Merlin knew it would all go swimmingly with those two—but he didn't want to deal with questions. Crabbe and Goyle never asked anything, which was why he found himself preferring their company during sixth year. Of the two, Goyle was the better swimmer, and that was why Draco chose him. He trusted him not to muck it up, but alas, Goyle was Goyle. Once his life was no longer in danger, they decided to head back, abandoning their quest. It was only later that Draco realized he had left something behind.
Still struggling with the Cabinet, Draco mulled over this alternative path. Suppose the Death Eaters reached the Black Lake without trouble; it wasn't as if they could simply resurface there and enter Hogwarts through the front doors. The best entry for them would be through Draco's own dorm, which had no windows and, obviously, no doors leading out to the lake. Blowing a hole in the wall with an explosion spell wouldn't work; with a thousand pieces flying in every direction, he wouldn't have time to reassemble the wall before water flooded his room. No, that wouldn't do at all. So he continued researching options.
During this whole ordeal, a book on spell crafting and modification, conveniently forgotten on Draco's library table, was the only help he allowed himself to accept from Snape. That, and the potion ingredients he'd stolen from Snape's cabinets earlier, though those served a different purpose.
The spell he'd been practicing on the ruins of a muggle castle was of his own creation. An enhanced version of the Severing Charm, it was capable of cutting through the thickest stone—much like a muggle laser, now that he thought about it. Back at Hogwarts, he'd never actually tested the spell on a physical wall, so it needed to be streamlined and improved, which was what he'd been doing for the past couple of weeks.
"Oh, that explains a lot," Ruth commented upon hearing this bit of information. Her gaze was fixed on a wall behind Draco as she thought, nodding to herself from time to time. "And you're sure there isn't a simpler option?"
"I've spent a year thinking about it, so yes, I'm sure," said Draco, though not too confidently. "If we used any secret passageway—that is, if we knew of any—we could never be sure of its safety."
"This one doesn't sound very safe either. What were you going to do about the lake creatures?"
"Sleeping Draught. A very powerful, specially brewed Sleeping Draught, evenly dispersed through the lake waters."
"And where would you get such a draught?"
"I'd brewed it."
"Do you have it here?"
"No." He shook his head. "The draught is already there."
Ruth furrowed her brows.
After a pause, Draco chose to elaborate. "In spring, I went to explore the caves with my, uh... friend of sorts. In case there was an actual passage, I brewed the potion in advance so I could test it on the creatures. But then this twit goes and bungles everything, as always. Almost died, the absolute cretin. In that whole mess, I didn't even notice how my pouch got lost. The potion was in there, so it has to be somewhere in the caves."
She raised her eyebrows. "How reassuring."
"I know, I know. It's far from certain, but I believe the caves were unexplored, so it's reasonable to assume no one's taken it. And that pouch was high quality—waterproof, too. The potion should be fine."
"But isn't it untested? What if it doesn't work?"
Draco huffed a sigh. "Then I'll have to use my natural charm and convince the merpeople to help me."
Ruth didn't bother to hide her scepticism; it was so obvious that Draco felt almost offended.
"Look, as I've already said, you can stay here. In fact, you should stay here—"
"Uh-uh. Even if the plan is bonkers, I'm still going with you. Just trying to probe for weaknesses so we can be prepared. Now, is there something else you're worried about?"
Draco remained silent for a while.
"There is, actually." There was a lot more to worry about, if he were being honest. But one of those things was... "The Bubble Charm. I'm not sure if it'll deter the Sleeping Draught from entering our systems. I brewed it especially strong—used moonstone dust, slumberweed, everything—and Bubble Charms are somewhat unreliable. If they pop, even for a second, we could fall asleep right there."
"There's no need for Bubble Charms. We could just use scuba gear."
"Scuba, what?"
Ruth spent the next half hour explaining the wonders of muggle ingenuity to Draco. Once she was done with that, they spent the rest of the day discussing the plan further.
In the end, it was decided that when they got into Hogwarts—if they got into Hogwarts—Ruth would find Gryffindors and try to reach out to the Order through them, while Draco would find Snape and, hopefully, go save his parents. Salazar knew it took all his shreds of optimism to decide to go through with this mad plan.
As the last weeks of October slipped away, Draco and Ruth were preparing to part ways. Their training became—impossibly—even more intense, while their hours of rest were cut to a minimum.
Draco was rushing, he knew that.
Ruth had only just begun making progress with the wandless Knockback Jinx, which manifested not as a concentrated ball of light but as an invisible wave of energy barely stronger than a gust of wind. She'd failed to learn how to cast wandless Stunners, as had Draco, and as for her wanded Stupefy, it worked only one time out of five. She had managed to Stun him once—when he was exhausted and caught off guard—and he woke two hours later because she didn't know the Reviving Spell.
It was a disaster.
Her wandless protective shields were fragile, flickering layers of energy, so thin that they could block only the least powerful and least precise of his spells.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Ruth couldn't even Apparate yet. It was only a matter of time before she got caught (if she didn't get caught immediately, which was the likeliest scenario) and faced the most horrible death at the hands of sadists. And if one of her captors also happened to be a Legilimens...
Sadly, there was no point in even trying to teach her Occlumency in such a short time span. Draco would have to erase himself from her memories, for leaving her memory intact was too risky.
There was no other way. Of course, there wasn't.
It was the right decision. However, thinking about it made him feel sad for some reason, so he didn't.
Whichever way you looked at it, it was a complete and utter disaster. Draco knew that, but he couldn't afford to wait any longer.
It was the evening of October twenty-eighth, the night before their departure, and they were getting drunk on a stolen bottle of wine. The cheap muggle alcohol did nothing to calm Draco's racing mind. A thousand things could go wrong, and each one would inevitably lead them to their deaths.
Across from him, at the other end of the sofa, sat Ruth, casually sipping her wine. The distant light from the kitchen illuminated one side of her face. It was a mystery how she could remain so calm knowing what they were about to face.
If she followed through with her plans, Draco simply didn't see how she could possibly make it out alive. Even if they managed to get into Hogwarts safely, once separated, her recklessness would have her killed within a day.
It shouldn't have bothered him. Certainly not when his own fate was so uncertain. He shouldn't have cared at all. Not so long ago, he'd have rejoiced to finally be rid of her. So why did the prospect of leaving her all alone in enemy territory suddenly fill him with dread?
"To our quests," said Ruth, raising her fourth glass. "May we both achieve what we most desire, despite those dismal odds."
Draco raised his glass silently and took a sip.
Did she truly have no sense of self-preservation? Was she so delusional as to harbour any real hope of success?
Noticing his intense gaze, Ruth looked up at him and asked, "What?"
She wasn't stupid, and now she knew how dangerous Death Eaters were. So how could she not see it?
"Just say it, will you? What is it?"
Despite not wanting to undertake his mission alone, Draco decided to make one last attempt to convince her to stay and abandon her plans.
"It's just," Draco said and paused. Her hand reached for the bottle in order to refill her already empty glass. "Eye for an eye, blood for blood, I get it. Familial vendettas are big in the wizarding world. What I don't understand—what I don't understand at all, to be honest—is... You've already killed three of them, including the woman who murdered your brother. Three lives for one. Isn't that—Isn't that enough vengeance?"
Without a word, Ruth filled her glass to the brim and chugged it in one go. Then she put her glass down on a side table and looked him directly in the eye.
"You don't understand," she said. "And I... I don't know if I can explain it to you."
Silently, he emptied his own glass and waited for her to continue. Soon, she did—in a hoarse, uneven voice.
"It wasn't just a brother I lost. No. Raymond was so much more than that. He was everything I had. Everything I know, every skill of mine, I owe it all to him.
"You see, ever since we'd gone into hiding, I could never trust anyone. I couldn't go to school—he taught me everything. When I got sick, I couldn't see a doctor—he took care of me. I couldn't make acquaintances, let alone friends—he was my only friend. He was my only family."
Ruth's features twisted, and her next words came in a whisper, "When I lost him, I lost my whole world."
Her eyes glistened with tears, and she angrily wiped them away before locking gazes with him again.
"So no, three dead bodies are not enough." Her quiet words were pure, agonised fury. "They haven't suffered enough. And I'm going to change that."
Before he could stop himself, Draco whispered, "I'm sorry."
Her hand froze mid-reach for the bottle.
"What are you apologising for?"
There was a pause.
"I never told you why exactly we went after you, did I?"
Ruth was watching him intently now. Draco looked away.
"That night, when we found you—it was meant to serve as a sort of training for me," he finally said, swallowing a lump in his throat. "Training in the Killing Curse."
Silence fell between them. He chanced a look at Ruth. The edges of her face got sharper, but she didn't speak. Draco had hoped she would storm off, sparing him from finishing the story. But she remained still in her corner of the sofa. Too still. Now, he had no choice but to continue.
"My aunt thought I was too weak. And weak people didn't survive wars. She wanted to help me, I guess. Or maybe she was simply looking for an excuse to kill and torture—I don't know. Anyway, that night, she, her husband, and his brother gave me a list of people and told me to choose. There were no good choices there. All of them were children under ten. All except you."
He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, "It was me. I led them to you."
A minute passed in another sharp silence. Draco didn't dare look at her, not knowing how she would respond. Tears, shouting, or even her leaving—he was ready for anything. He would understand. But Ruth did none of those things.
"You know, the funny thing is," she said, her voice teetering on the edge of hysterical laughter, "the funny thing is, if you had come for me just a month later, Raymond and I would've been gone. We were going to leave the country as soon as I turned seventeen. To Indonesia. He'd always wanted to go to the tropics."
Draco didn't reply. There was nothing he could possibly say.
"We had everything planned out. Raymond had a guy forging documents for us. We just had to wait a few more days, and they'd be ready. We—We almost made it. We almost..."
And she broke down. Her whole body shook with sobs, her elbows digging into her knees as she sat there with her face buried in her hands. She seemed so tiny then, and it made his chest ache.
Draco didn't know if it was the alcohol or something else entirely that compelled him to move closer. Awkwardly, he put an arm around her, hugging her shoulders.
"We—We almost made it," she choked out in a voice that didn't sound like her own.
Draco's embrace grew tighter. Though Ruth couldn't see it, his eyes were beginning to burn too.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
She was falling apart, and he held her, whispering, over and over, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry".
They fell asleep like that.
When Draco woke up the next morning, Ruth was gone. His neck ached from sleeping in a sitting position, and his head felt slightly dizzy from drinking, even though he hadn't finished three full glasses.
Outside, the sun was beginning to rise. They had been planning to head out first thing in the morning.
The wooden floors creaked as Draco went around the silent house, getting ready. When he returned to the hallway half an hour later, properly dressed and freshened up, the door to Ruth's bedroom was still closed.
Did she have a change of heart after his drunken revelation? She had to. Nobody in their right mind would want to help him, knowing what he'd done.
His transfigured backpack was waiting near the front door, just as he'd left it the night before. As Draco moved to grab it, he heard the sound of a door opening.
Ruth stood in the doorway of her room, fully clothed and with a backpack of her own slung over her shoulder. Her eyes were a bit swollen, but other than that, she looked fine. Ready to go.
"You're... coming?" asked Draco.
She closed the door behind her and turned to him again.
"I am."
Ruth walked over to where he stood, rummaging through her backpack until she found a simple, black scarf. Gently, as if his skin were made of glass, she wrapped it around his neck.
All Draco could utter was, "Why?"
Tentatively, her eyes met his, and the look in them was soft and shiny.
"Misfits need misfits," she said. "To survive. To live. To fight. No one should stand alone against the world."