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Chapter Fourteen—Confrontation

Albus leaned back and stared at the mess on his desk, the writing in blood, and felt heartbreak pour through him.

He had conducted an old and risky Divination ritual, using a portion of Ginny Weasley’s blood, to find out if Lord Voldemort had had something to do with her death.

The blood had coalesced and spun around itself in droplets like a small storm, and then fallen so that it spelled out a single word in thick, damp letters.

YES.

Albus sat still, reaching out to touch Fawkes’s breast as the phoenix sang a little anxiously next to him, and wished he had not asked the question. The ritual he had conducted was illegal, for one thing. He could hardly submit its answer to a court of law or ask the Aurors to take it seriously, not when most of the magical world believed that Lord Voldemort had never returned.

But more than that, he could only ask questions with a yes or no answer. He knew now that Lord Voldemort had had something to do with Ginny Weasley’s death.

But not what, or how. Not why this was a target Lord Voldemort had picked. Yes, he might have wanted to cause pain to a family he would consider blood traitors or who had fought against him, but why choose their youngest daughter for his first kill after gaining a body?

No, it made no sense. And Albus would never know the circumstances unless he managed somehow, miraculously, to ask the right question.

His head pounded and so did his heart with the expenditure of magic. And Molly and Arthur, although they had given him the blood without question, would be left waiting to know what he had learned.

He must tell them. But he did not know how much it would comfort them to know that their daughter was a casualty in a war that had never ended, instead of a casualty of a natural tragedy that had burst in her brain.

*

“And Slytherin wins!”

The Gryffindor commentator sounded glum announcing it, but Harry didn’t care. He already knew he was unpopular with the Gryffindors. The point was that he had grabbed the Snitch, and the Gryffindor Seeker hadn’t, and they had won.

Which made him popular inside his own House, which was the one he cared about.

“Party in the common room tonight!” yelled Bletchley, holding up his arms and shaking his broom at the sky as if he were the one who had snatched victory down from the clouds.

“Might let you try Firewhisky, Grayson,” Flint said, pausing beside Harry as they walked back to shower and put their brooms away. “Young as you are, you should get used to it before you start drinking it later on.”

Harry ducked his head and acted embarrassed and pleased and grateful. It was easier when they couldn’t see his eyes. “Thank you, Captain.”

Flint chuckled, clapped his shoulder again hard enough to stagger him, and went into the showers. Harry was the last one, since he had to make sure that his broom was cared for. The other team members might get away with treating something that was a gift from Lucius Malfoy carelessly, but Harry knew he wouldn’t.

When he came back out of the showers, he was the only one left. Well, no. The only Slytherin left.

Leaning against the walls, waiting for him, were the Weasley twins.

Harry watched them in silence, his hands down by his sides. He didn’t have his wand, and he cursed his decision to leave it behind, even though he also hadn’t wanted to get it wet. But he had more moisture in the air than usual to work with, and he began to weave water around the Gryffindors’ feet with wandless magic.

“Wow, look at the little snake seem threatening, Ford.”

“Believe I see him growing fangs already, Forge.”

Harry didn’t respond. He knew the twins talked a lot of nonsense, and also that they were known for their vicious and clever pranks on Slytherins. He went on weaving his water. He was ready to make the floor slick enough they would trip if they tried to move forwards.

“Relax, little Slytherin. We just want to talk to you.”

Harry tilted his head and continued to say nothing. For one thing, he knew that they would manage to turn his words back on him mockingly no matter which ones he chose.

For another, he could tell it was unnerving them, a bit, and he would take any advantage he could.

“Aren’t you lonely in your House?”

“Don’t you wish that you could do something to get back at them for all the times they’ve insulted you? We know they have, don’t deny it.”

“We’ve heard multiple Slytherins insulting you. Some of them were hoping that you’d get taken by the beast in the Chamber.”

“We just want to know what you feel about that.”

Harry studied them in silence for a moment more, but he could see the twin on the left, whichever one he was, reaching for a wand, and he thought it would be best to answer. The Weasleys as a whole had apparently been on edge since the youngest one got killed, and the twins had had detention after detention for hexing people they thought had something to do with it.

“I know what my position in my House is. And I don’t think that you’re here out of the goodness of your hearts, either.”

The one on the left lifted his hand from his wand, and they gave him identical grins radiating menace. “Well, no—”

“We’d like you to throw a game or two. Just to take down the smug bastards we know had something to do with our sister’s death.”

Everett is more likely the one who had something to do with it. He visits and she dies?

But Harry would have been smart enough not to say anything about that even if he was a Gryffindor, so he just shook his head. “They would know I did it. I’ve played as well as I can for four games in a row, but suddenly I can’t manage it?”

“We want this, little Slytherin.”

“Tell us what you want in return, and we’ll make it happen. We’ll make sure that no one suspects.”

Harry was beginning to think that he might be in more trouble than he’d thought. The twins had that unnerving edge to their words as well as their grins, and the one on the right was opening and closing his fists in a way that made Harry think they wanted a Slytherin to beat up. They’d take a Muggleborn who was being “stubborn” if they couldn’t get at the purebloods they thought had something to do with their sister’s death.

Harry might have accepted a beating or a hexing, last year, as the price of keeping his place in his House. But he had rediscovered pride and decided he liked the taste.

He said simply, “No. I don’t cheat during the games, and I won’t cheat because you want me to.”

“Wrong answer—”

Harry condensed the water vapor he’d kept circling invisibly around them and hit them in the faces with it as hard as he could.

The twins shrieked and tried to reach for their wands, but the floor was already slick with water beneath them, and Harry poured it over them in a cascade. They slipped and slid, and Harry leaped past them, snatched up his clothes and his wand, and ran.

He was still fast from his days outrunning Dudley, and he knew how to be sneaky given that he’d been slipping around the school to brew. He made it to the castle well before they did.

And then Harry dashed immediately to the dungeons, let himself be seen as shaky and breathless when he hurried into the common room, and went straight to Marcus Flint. He knew that Flint’s Quidditch rivalry was worst with the Gryffindor Keeper, but he didn’t like the twins, either.

Flint was staring down at a parchment that looked like it was covered with Arithmantic calculations in front of him, but he switched his scowl to Harry readily enough. “What do you want, Grayson?”

“Apologies, Captain,” Harry said, stopping and working his hands in front of him as if he thought he had something to actually apologize for. “But the Weasley twins ambushed me as I was coming out of the showers.”

Pucey was turning to look now, and Theo and Draco on the other side of the common room. Harry ignored the way Draco was sitting up. Harry didn’t need him to resolve this.

“They hurt you?” Flint’s eyes were narrowed, a ripple that promised violence running through his muscles.

“No. But they wanted to. They said that they wanted me to throw the next game because they blame purebloods in Slytherin for their sister’s death. And they tried to attack me, but I got away.”

A low growl ran through the older players in front of him. Harry cowered and looked down, but Flint clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Not your fault. And we’ll make sure they get theirs.”

Harry looked up with big, hopeful eyes. He didn’t have to ask the question. Everyone knew the Weasley twins were always getting detentions, but also that they played their pranks anyway.

“Not to worry,” said Flint, and grinned as he cracked his knuckles. “The professors normally don’t do anything about them, but—”

“They picked the wrong target this time,” Bletchley said. Elliot Yeltsin on the other side of him, who had tried out for one of the Chaser spots but hadn’t been picked, nodded, his eyes alight with vicious glee.

“Stay with others for a few days while we work on this, Grayson. They’ll have to attack a group if they want to attack you at all.”

“O—okay, Captain. Thank you.”

Flint winked at him and then turned around to talk with some of the other Slytherins on the team. It was so clear a dismissal that Harry bowed his head and turned around to walk back to Theo and Draco.

“You could have come to one of us for that,” Draco hissed the moment Harry sat down.

“Oh, but you don’t have the pull Flint does with the rest of the team, and I didn’t want to say anything about the Weasley twins to you,” Harry said earnestly. “I know that your family has some sort of problem with their family. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

Draco sat back to gape at him. Harry just kept up the earnest stare, at least until Theo jostled an elbow into his side and made him look that way.

Theo had got a lot more comfortable with touching him lately, Harry thought. In some ways, that was good, but he also wanted to remind Theo he needed the respect his “friend” gave to purebloods. It wouldn’t do to have him think Harry wasn’t filthy if it meant Theo treated him with disrespect.

“What exactly did the twins say?”

Harry recounted the conversation, keeping his eyes modestly on the floor. He didn’t bring up the part about the water vapor or stinging the twins or making them slip. He just said that he’d run away when they started to act like they would attack him.

“My father will hear about this!”

“I don’t think he would care about an argument between schoolboys, Draco.”

Theo was the one who said that, in the most condescending voice Harry had ever heard, so Harry was the one who could mumble, “I just don’t want to make things worse between the Malfoys and the Weasleys.”

“It’s going to get worse, but not because of you,” Draco said darkly, and stood up to march towards the dormitory.

“Why do you think they went after you in particular?” Theo asked, turning his attention to Harry. “Instead of another member of the Quidditch team?”

“Oh. Because I’m Muggleborn, and they assumed that I would be getting all sorts of taunts from the other team members and be willing to throw the game because of that. And because I’m younger and smaller than them, I’m sure.”

“You weren’t even tempted to throw the game, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no! Why would I endanger my position in Slytherin that way?”

Theo obviously struggled with that. Harry looked at him with big eyes and said nothing. Theo finally grunted, “Of course,” and went back to the parchment in front of him. It didn’t look like it was for an essay.

But if he was meant to ask about it, Harry had no intention of doing so. He made an excuse about being tired and went to huddle near the fire and stare tragically into it. The others could put it down as him being scared after having confronted the Weasley twins, if they wanted to.

They wouldn’t notice that Harry was practicing with little flames and embers to conjure fire with his wandless magic.

Flint and the others might say they were going to keep the Weasley twins from retaliating, but Harry had zero trust they would manage that, so he was going to keep himself safe no matter what.

*

Draco watched his owl soar away with his message to his father, and nodded. Father would relish the opportunity to humiliate the Weasley father over the prejudiced behavior of his sons.

But more to the point, it would show Harry that the Malfoys could do things for him.

Draco had received a pleasant letter from Mother that had contained hints certain people had been asking after Harry. Draco hadn’t realized that Mother knew any of the people Harry had been brewing for last summer, but it made sense. And since Draco hadn’t mentioned Harry in his letters for a while, Mother wanted to know if they still had a cordial relationship.

It would be worth it to renew the relationship if they did not, Mother had written.

Draco had sent her a reassuring letter the night before. Of course they still had a cordial relationship, he’d written. Harry was aware that he owed his position on the Slytherin team to Draco.

And now, this letter to Father would renew the ties between their family and Harry in his parents’ eyes, making it worth the trouble to send for another reason.

There was the fact that since Harry had won Slytherin so many games because of his Seeker skills, he probably didn’t feel that he owed Draco as much as he once had. And there was the fact that Flint had taken Harry’s protection on himself immediately.

Those things didn’t matter. Draco wouldn’t let them matter.

And he was sure that he was already more on Harry’s good side than Theo. Theo had seen that the game had changed after Draco had.

Draco knew that. He was sure of that.

Of course he was.

*

“That is—an enormous amount of points lost, Minerva,” Lily said in astonishment, staring at the Gryffindor hourglass. Then she glanced at Minerva when the Gryffindor Head of House’s silence continued and found her nostrils flared.

“The Weasley twins did something highly inadvisable.”

“Still! Most of us know to tolerate their pranking.”

Minerva began fixing her tea with jerky little movements. Lily watched her in growing concern. Minerva only spoke when she had taken more than one sip of the tea and then continued to add sugar to it. “It seems the Weasley twins went and confronted Mr. Grayson after yesterday’s Quidditch match.”

“Mr.—Grayson?”

Lily hated the catch in her voice, which she thought must sound odd to everyone, but Minerva didn’t seem to have noticed Lily’s attention to Harry the way Horace had. Minerva just nodded sharply. “They wanted him to throw the next game he plays for Slytherin, apparently. They believed that because he is a Muggleborn in Slytherin, he is vulnerable to pressure.”

“They never—surely they’re not blood purists? Molly and Arthur would never tolerate that.”

“Nor I.” Minerva’s hands curled hard enough around the teacup that Lily thought for a moment she would crush it. “But Mr. Flint and several other Slytherin Quidditch team members made their case to Horace, and then to Albus, that the twins singling out the only acknowledged Muggleborn in Slytherin looks—worse than bad.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Because they blame Mr. Grayson’s teammates for the death of their sister. And other purebloods in Slytherin.”

“There’s no evidence—”

“It does not matter. The Weasley boys are grieving and lashing out. I thought I had done the right thing by permitting them to remain in school instead of withdrawing for the term, but—I might not have done so.”

Lily winced at the mere thought of the Weasley twins “lashing out” when their level of pranking up until this point had to be considered “normal,” and turned her head. Harry was immersed in a book at the Slytherin table, as he usually was. She did think that a few of the older ones looked more viciously pleased than normal, though.

She had to ask. “And do you think that a loss of points like this will be enough to keep them in line?”

“I have also banned them from the last Quidditch game of the season.”

“Minerva!”

Minerva looked up, and there was anguish on her face, but also a stern resolve that Lily didn’t think she had seen since her own student days. “I cannot let them act against an innocent second-year who has done nothing wrong, Lily. Particularly one who is an outsider in his own House. And that they chose to make a point of Mr. Grayson’s blood status hardly looks good for them.”

Lily choked back many things she wanted to say, and merely nodded. Of course she didn’t want Harry to be the target of Weasley pranks, but she couldn’t reveal her own interest in that.

She did keep an eye on Harry during the rest of breakfast, and thought that he gave the Gryffindor table a smile or two.

At least he is not at as much of a disadvantage as I thought he would be, Lily thought, and then wondered if that idea should be a source of pride or despair.