Chapter Ten of "Inter Vivos"- Surprises

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Chapter Ten—Surprises

“Boy!”

Harry turned around to face Uncle Vernon. He’d been busy cleaning up the breakfast dishes, and usually, his uncle didn’t bother him whilst he was doing that. But now he was here, and, just like he had to do with any break in his routine, Harry kept his face blank and endured it.

“What’s this, then?” Uncle Vernon demanded, and thrust a letter under Harry’s nose. Harry looked down at it. It was from Sirius, as the signature clearly said, and he saw a few words about “school” and “on the run” and “hunting Pettigrew.” He had to keep his hands from reaching out to grab it. He had learned the hard way never to grab something from his uncle.

“That’s a letter from my godfather,” Harry said quietly.

“Eh?” Vernon took a step back from him, his mouth hanging open. Harry watched him with contempt. He had only to think of the way Draco or Snape would take a shock like that—assuming the news was a shock at all, and they weren’t only pretending it was—to feel that contempt.

If you want to impress someone, restrain yourself. Draco wouldn’t have fooled his father if he was wailing and upset about the embarrassment he’d pretended to feel.

“You don’t have a godfather, boy!” Uncle Vernon stabbed a finger at him, face turning purple. “We would know if you did. Those freaks you call parents—”

Harry interrupted quickly, because he could feel the bubble of magic building up in him, just the way it had when he blew up Aunt Marge last year, and he wanted to do something other than release it. “He came back this year, Uncle Vernon. He’d been in prison.”

And God, it was nice to see the simple truth widen Uncle Vernon’s eyes.

“In p-prison?” Uncle Vernon licked his lips with a tongue that left a bit of spit at the corners of them. “What’d he do, then? Something unnatural?”

“They thought he killed thirteen people,” Harry said peacefully. And it was still the truth. He’d told Uncle Vernon what everyone, even Dumbledore, believed about Sirius at the time.

Dumbledore. A bit of the overheard conversation between Snape and Sirius that Harry hadn’t paid much attention to until now came back to him. Dumbledore didn’t insist on a trial for Sirius, and he didn’t come to rescue Sirius when the Dementors were coming after him.

Why?

But then Uncle Vernon was speaking, and he would strike out fast and hard if he thought there was the slightest chance that Harry wasn’t paying attention to his all-important words. Harry forced himself to focus.

“A m-murderer?”

“That’s right,” Harry said. “And he’d be very upset about it if he thought anything bad was happening to me. Like me not getting his letter.” He paused as if he’d forgotten something, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I forgot you’d heard of him! He’s that Sirius Black who escaped last year.”

Uncle Vernon pushed the letter into his hands and backed away, his face like old cheese. Several times he stared at Harry before he lumbered out the kitchen door.

Harry smiled and read the letter.

As he’d suspected, it said Sirius was hunting Pettigrew. He thought Pettigrew might have gone to South America, and so he was there—enjoying the sun and far away from anyone trying to find him in Britain. Harry sighed in relief. He didn’t like what Sirius had done to Snape, but that was a long way from hoping he was captured and hauled back to the Ministry, or hoping that the Dementors Kissed him.

He finished the breakfast dishes and went to check the list of chores on the door of the cupboard beneath the stairs. It was much longer than usual for a Saturday.

Harry concealed another sigh. Standing up to the Dursleys didn’t do much good, because it didn’t win him the respect that Draco got from his father. They’d always find some little or petty way to strike back.

But at least he would have the right to read Sirius’s letters. That, Harry thought as he grabbed the list and then went outside to grab the lawnmower, was something.

*

Draco paused on the threshold of Lucius’s study and looked around cautiously. No one was there, and he relaxed. He had known, of course, that his father had left the house to go to the Parkinsons’ and deal with some matter of distasteful business, but there could still have been a house-elf here, or even his mother, come to turn over the books that she never seemed to read. Draco wanted to be alone.

He stiffened his spine as he walked further into the room, forcing himself to listen to his memories of Harry, and not the pounding of his heart. He had to be like Harry. He had to be brave. And that meant being a spy.

Lucius didn’t ever tell him anything important, except bits of information related to Malfoy business. Those weren’t secrets. Draco could have given Harry and Professor Snape a list of the families they dealt with, but so what? If Professor Snape had really been a Death Eater, he would already know about them anyway, and most of them either didn’t have children in Hogwarts—they’d sent them all to Durmstrang—or had Slytherin children Draco could keep an eye on, so Harry wasn’t in danger from that.

But lately his father had been smiling more often, and sometimes talking to Draco’s mother in an undertone that included the word “Potter.” So Draco knew something was going on. But he wasn’t a good enough liar yet to draw it out of his father.

So he went looking.

His father’s desk was covered with neat stacks of paper. Draco glanced at the top sheet of each, glad that Lucius was so organized. If one pile had a report from Gringotts in it, then Draco knew all the other papers in the pile would be the same thing.

One pile was letters—and not business letters, because he had already passed those. Draco took a deep breath and began to flick carefully through them. He’d used a spell that would prevent any trace of his skin or scent from showing up on the paper; Lucius shouldn’t be able to detect them even if he had a werewolf with him.

A letter from Mr. Parkinson, giving the suggestion that Draco and Pansy get betrothed now. Draco shuddered.

A letter from the Ministry, informing Lucius that now was the right time to make his charitable contribution to the Fund for Widows and Orphans of the War. Draco rolled his eyes. I can’t believe they’re so stupid. My father fought in that war and helped to make those widows and orphans! Don’t they see that he’s just giving them money to score political points?

A letter from the Wizarding Historical Society, requesting information on what had caused the feud between the Malfoys and Weasleys. Draco was tempted to stand there and read it, but he didn’t. He didn’t think the Society really knew anything already, and Lucius certainly wouldn’t tell them.

A letter on thick, creamy parchment. Draco turned it around so he could see the signature, and gasped softly. The letter was from Walden Macnair, who worked for the Ministry and would have executed the hippogriff if Draco hadn’t stood up to Lucius. Draco knew that Macnair and Lucius had worked together before.

Maybe it wasn’t very important, but it was the most exciting thing Draco had found so far. He looked at the top.

Dear Lucius,

It has come to my attention that you may know where a certain Very Important Artifact is. It has vanished from—

The door to the study opened.

Draco wanted to jump and fling letters everywhere, but he didn’t. Even if Snape’s training in lying hadn’t been good enough to fool his father all the time yet, his training in controlling emotions and movements had been. Draco tucked the letter neatly back into place, smoothed the other letters on top of it, and turned around to face his father with Mr. Parkinson’s letter in his hand and a look of firm disgust on his face.

“Draco.” Lucius stood in the doorway with a kind of coiled energy to him. Draco had gone to zoos and seen hunting entertainments; he knew jaguars coiled like that when they were about to spring on their prey. “What are you doing here?”

“Forgive me, Father,” Draco said, which he knew was always a good start. “But I had to know if you were going to betroth me to Pansy Parkinson.” He flourished the letter at his father. “You’re not really going to do it, are you?”

Lucius curled his lip. “Has my loathing for that family not been made sufficiently clear to you?” He crossed to the desk with quick steps and examined the papers with a practiced eye. Draco ignored that. He’d been careful not to disturb the other piles, and if the letters were disturbed, that was only because Draco had been searching for this letter.

“I know,” said Draco, and controlled the impulse to step back as Lucius’s cane swept near him. “But Pansy wrote me the most appalling rubbish this week about how her father wanted it, and she wanted it, and she was sure Mr. Parkinson had an offer that would get you to agree.”

Lucius laughed, a sound, as far as Draco could tell, of genuine amusement. “There is nothing in the world that would fit that description,” he said. He picked up several of the letters, including, Draco was certain, the Macnair one, and tucked them into his cloak. “I can understand why you think you had a right to know this, Draco,” Lucius continued in slightly chiding tones, “since it concerns you. But in future, please ask me, instead of invading my privacy.” He held out his hand for Mr. Parkinson’s letter.

Draco gave it back, but he kept his chin up, not accepting the soft, chilly rebuke implied by Lucius’s last words. “I know,” he said, “but it seems that you don’t trust me with much important business. I wasn’t sure that you would tell me if I asked. And you should. I’m growing up, now.” He took a deep breath and said the riskiest thing. “And I think I’ve proven that I care about the family dignity.”

Lucius paused, his eyes hooded, his face still, and then nodded slowly. “You may be right about that, Draco. Consider this summer your introduction to the larger world. You will learn more about my political contacts, as well as the business that is incidental to the Malfoy fortune.”

Draco kept his face serene as he nodded, but inwardly cheered and jumped up and down. Now he could really do some spying!

And he was sure Lucius didn’t know he’d been snooping through the letters for something else. Draco would know the signs of that.

*

Severus sat back behind his desk and reached for the glass of tea he had promised himself when he had made an honest effort to search for the solution to the riddle. And though he knew he deserved it—though no one else could have spent this much time trying to figure out where Finnigan’s family line led to—he had no answers, and the tea failed to drown the bitterness in his mouth.

Why should it be so hard to locate his relatives? Severus rolled the tea around on his tongue and tried to think of possible answers to that question, but, as usual, the answers tumbled into darkness when he employed logic.

Finnigan’s father was a Muggle. It made sense that his Muggle relatives would not exist in the records of the wizarding community. But Finnigan’s mother was pure-blood and from a family that had once enjoyed a fairly strong reputation as supporters of charitable groups. They had fallen off in wealth and power in the twentieth century, but the records still existed.

It seemed, however, that every record Severus could find went back only to 1930, and that, though he knew the Goodbody family had existed in the nineteenth century and were related to Eleanor Goodbody, Finnigan’s mother, her parents might as well have been created from spontaneous generation. Everything from 1850 to 1930 was a blank.

And where might they have learned such powerful Dark magic? There was no answer to that question, either. Severus could not find a single newspaper article about Eleanor Goodbody other than an announcement of her birth, none of her signatures on the books in Hogwarts’s library that concerned the Dark Arts, no records in the books available to him from colleagues that she had been trained by the Dark wizards who managed to evade the Ministry.

And as for whether they had really had a Parselmouth relative…

Severus grimaced. Many of the records of Parselmouths in Britain were also missing, but he knew the culprit in that case. The Dark Lord had destroyed them, fearing that someone who could challenge his dominance might have arisen if they had remained intact. After last year, when he had learned for sure that the Dark Lord was the Heir of Slytherin, Severus could see why.

But none of this got him closer to a solution or explained Finnigan’s hostility to Potter. That hostility was quiet and simmering for now, but Severus knew people too well not to think it would explode again at some point.

“Severus? Are you busy?”

Dumbledore had come inside his wards without warning, and now stuck his head around the door. Severus restrained his sigh and nodded a greeting. If Dumbledore wanted to, he could take it as welcome. “Not so busy, Albus, now. Have a seat.”

Dumbledore sat down on the chair in front of Severus’s desk and spent a moment staring thoughtfully into the fire. Severus waited, unimpressed. He recognized this tactic. It was meant to stir up either curiosity or uneasiness. Severus had very little of the latter left, and almost none of the former where the Headmaster was concerned.

Except for one question, of course.

Why did he not intervene to rescue Black?

But he would not get an answer to that question for asking. He would have to rely on observation and insight, the spy’s tools. Given that, Severus folded his hands in front of him now and patiently waited for Dumbledore to tire of his games.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said at last, still gazing into the fire, “it has come to my attention that you spend a great deal of time with young Harry.”

“Yes,” Severus said, “I do.”

“Why?” And Dumbledore looked up, and looked him in the eye.

Severus met the gaze without flinching. Dumbledore was an accomplished Legilimens, but not as much so as Severus was an Occlumens. “The boy’s Potions scores are abysmal,” he said. “But he shows some signs of intelligence. It is evident, therefore, that lack of effort and not cleverness prevents him from getting higher marks. I am trying to teach him to learn better.”

“I have sensed some evidence of the Dark Arts coming from the dungeons,” Dumbledore said. “Vibrations from your wand have troubled me when we passed in the corridors.”

“I am teaching him to defend against curses,” Severus said. “That naturally involves casting the curses.”

“But why, Severus?” Dumbledore leaned forwards earnestly, the light shining on his glasses, and incidentally concealing his eyes. “Why not someone else? I know the boy was building a bond with Sirius before Sirius had to leave. And he was learning from Remus. Minerva actually brought me word that she was concerned, that Harry should have come to her for extra tutoring and did not.”

Severus held absolutely still, and knew he was in more danger than Draco had been when facing Lucius.

But he had been in far greater danger every day that he knelt at the Dark Lord’s feet.

“I have remembered what I should have remembered long ago,” said Severus. “The thing you tried to hint gently to me, Albus, and which I did not manage to think of before now. To my shame,” he forced himself to add, though of course it wasn’t, not really.

“And what is that?”

“He is Lily’s son as well as James’s,” Severus said. “And I loved Lily.”

It cut him to speak the last words aloud, but not as much it would have to speak them in front of an unknowing audience. Dumbledore knew every secret of his soul. And he would do worse to keep the boy with him. He had been prepared to kill Black.

Besides, Severus knew this was almost the only thing he could say that would convince Dumbledore to go away and leave him alone.

Dumbledore collapsed backwards as if someone had cut his strings. “Of course,” he said softly. “Severus, forgive me. I had unwarranted suspicions, and I must admit, I thought your soul had stopped growing some time ago. Forgive me,” he repeated.

“Forgiven,” Severus said magnanimously, whilst his soul made quiet plans to pull Potter closer until even Dumbledore’s forbidding him to meet with Severus, if he did, would have no effect on the boy’s behavior.

*

Harry had nodded to Draco on the train, and Draco had walked past with his friends and hadn’t stopped, but he did nod back. And during dinner, he mouthed a few questions at Harry across the tables—mostly having to do with their secret meetings with Snape, Harry thought, since one of the most frequent words was “detention”—and Harry had to shrug and shake his head, because Snape hadn’t owled him at all over the summer. It seemed more likely that he would have contacted Draco than anyone else, because Harry wasn’t blind; he knew Draco was Snape’s favorite student.

For a moment, he swallowed bitterness with his potatoes. Draco had the relationship with Snape that Harry had wanted to have with Sirius: guiding and subtle and full of things to talk about. His own father didn’t love him that much, but there was a substitute.

Harry didn’t get to have that.

A hand touched his arm. Harry banished the thoughts, because they were full of self-pity and not productive, and turned to look at Hermione, who was frowning at him. “We need to talk,” she said quietly.

Harry swallowed more potatoes and nodded. He thought he knew what she wanted to talk about.

And sure enough, when Hermione and Ron turned around and faced him in a corner of the Gryffindor common room far from the fire, and thus from the conversations and games of Exploding Snap going on near the hearth, the first words out of Hermione’s mouth were, “Are you friends with Malfoy, Harry?”

Harry didn’t have a plan prepared for this. He had always vaguely hoped that he could put off telling Ron and Hermione for a while, and then a while longer, and try to make them see, slowly, that Draco was good.

In some ways, he reminded himself, because Draco had still said some things about Hermione on the last day of school last year that Harry had almost hit him for.

“Yeah,” he said, “I am.”

Ron at once looked distressed. Before, he’d been half-smiling, and Harry decided he hadn’t really believed Hermione. “Why, mate?” he demanded. “What did he do? Did he cast the Imperius Curse? Because—”

“It’s not the Imperius Curse, Ron,” Hermione snapped back. “There are ways to detect that, and I already used them on Harry.”

Because she couldn’t trust me. Harry didn’t say anything, though, because it wouldn’t do any good. Hermione had already cast the spells. He would just have to be more alert in the future, and try to explain things about the Slytherins in his life before his friends got to this point. “Yes, I’m friends with Malfoy,” he said. “Because he’s been telling me things about his father. Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater during the first war. Draco is trying to teach me things about him, so that I’m not caught off-guard when Voldemort comes back.”

“But that’s dangerous, Harry,” Hermione said, her face immediately smoothing into lines of concern.

“And you don’t need to be his friend to do that,” Ron added, obviously more worried about that aspect of things.

All right, a lie won’t work. “Yeah, but I want to be,” said Harry. “And he was the one who got the execution against Buckbeak stopped, and he stood up to his father, and he did it because I asked him to. So he’s all right, all right?”

He could sense a few other Gryffindors looking at him curiously, but none of them seemed to be listening in the way they would if they realized it was Malfoy Harry was talking about. And Hermione’s face was pink, and Harry realized that he was embarrassed, in turn, about yelling like that. He tugged irritably on his hair and added, “And I don’t think he’ll always be nice. But you don’t have to spend time with him. I promise. I was spending time with him last year, and it never made me have less time to fly with you or study with you, did it?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “But what if he chooses his father over you when You-Know-Who comes back, Harry? How are you going to handle that?”

“He won’t,” Harry said.

“You can’t be confident of that.”

“Then I can’t be confident of anything,” Harry said, and looked at Ron. “You don’t mind, do you, mate?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Ron, and scowled at him. “But I know that you’ll go ahead and do it no matter what.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “I will.”

After a moment, Ron gave a reluctant smile. Hermione glanced back and forth between the both of them, looking baffled, and then went back to trying to persuade Harry to leave Draco alone, “for his own good.”

Harry ignored her. In some ways, he liked Hermione better than Ron; she got angry less easily. But in another way, he just had an understanding with Ron that he didn’t with Hermione, probably because she was a girl.

And he understood Draco even better, but he didn’t think he could tell his friends why. Part of the secret was Draco’s, and part was his, the way the Dursleys always had been.

*

“But I don’t understand that.”

Severus just kept himself from grinding his teeth. The boy was testing his patience. He had seen for himself, in the battle against the Dementors and the confrontation with Black afterwards, that the boy had remarkable courage and stubbornness and magical power, and he was not stupid—not if he could see through the excuses that Black threw up to mask his own behavior. He should be able to grasp Potions. That he couldn’t was a failing on his part, not on Severus’s.

“You would if you would concentrate,” Severus said, in lieu of the nastier comments he could have made.

“I’ve been concentrating for the last hour!” Potter cast the stirring rod he’d been using down on the table and leaned forwards, not seeming to notice the way one of his robe sleeves was nearly trailing in the cauldron. Severus stared severely, but that didn’t make Potter take his sleeve out or realize he had almost broken the stirring rod, which was glass. “It’s no use. I’ll never make a good Potions brewer. Let’s just concentrate on Defense Against the Dark Arts, instead.”

Severus experienced a brief jolt of shock. That the brat could so far have lost his fear of Severus as to make demands and mock him was incredible.

He took a step forwards, his eyes narrowed, one hand reaching out to scoop up the stirring rod and show the boy what should be done with it, the simple motions that he could learn if he wanted to, if he cared as much about potions as he did about Quidditch and the perverted spells that Dumbledore had given Moody permission to teach them—

And then he realized that Potter had moved. Not a large movement, a small one, but back from the table. And now he was lightly poised on his feet, in a way that indicated he was ready to spring at a moment’s notice in any direction.

His eyes were curiously blank. There was no longer any trust or openness in them, not that there had been much in the first place. He looked the way he had looked when Severus happened to pass Vector’s class one night: attentive and bored, as if he were putting up with a teacher he didn’t really like but had no alternative to.

It struck Severus, then, that demands and mockery might be one way that Potter showed his comfort around someone.

He took a deep breath and laid the stirring rod down. “Potter,” he said in a neutral voice, or at least as much of a neutral one as he could muster given the emotions and revelations of the moment, “perhaps you could tell me why you find it so difficult to remember Potions ingredients.”

“I don’t like it. Sir.”

Potter hadn’t called him sir in some time, except just after a duel, when Severus knew the title came from Potter’s respect for his spellcasting skills rather than for him as a person. He had fulminated against the omission in his head, but realized that he didn’t know a way to scold Potter on the matter without making him back away.

As he just did.

Even the dropping of the title might be—affectionate, in its way. Or at least a sign that Potter didn’t resent Severus’s instruction.

“You don’t like Astronomy, either,” Severus said temperately, “and you mange good marks in that class.”

Potter narrowed his eyes. Lily’s eyes. “How did you know that? Sir.”

“I took an interest in your scores after the last year,” said Severus. “And I know that you possess the brains and the talents to succeed at this, Potter. Yes, the talent is not natural to you the way it is to Draco, or the way that your Quidditch talent is.” The words burned his mouth, since that “natural” talent at Quidditch was one of the ways that James Potter had become more popular than Severus himself ever would be, but it calmed Potter down to be praised. “But you can master it if you try. Why don’t you want to try?”

Potter lowered his eyes for a moment and seemed to be struggling. Severus let him do it. In the end, Potter was the only one who could answer this question. Severus had come up with many theories on his own, but none of them fit all the circumstances present.

“Because it doesn’t make a difference,” Potter said at last, in a low voice. “Whether I’m doing bad or doing good—”

Severus, with an effort, held his tongue against his own instinctive desire to check the boy’s grammar.

“You react the same. Sometimes you say it’s right, but you don’t say why I got it right, and I can try just as hard and not get it right.” Potter looked up at him, the light from the fire catching on his glasses and hiding his eyes this time in an uncanny mimicry of Dumbledore. “When I get something wrong, Professor Vector tells me so, and why. And so does Professor McGonagall. And they tell me when I get something right, and at least smile. With you, I can’t tell anything at all, and your explanations are too quick.”

Severus did understand, then. And he would have understood it on his own if he had allowed himself to think about the matter in depth, rather than deciding that Potter was simply refusing to put in the necessary effort through some perverse reasoning of his own.

Potter was one of those students who needed general theories explained to them, rather than the interactions of individual ingredients. Severus was reluctant to do so in his classes because the general theories held so many exceptions. There was no way to tell, if a student relied solely on them, when the ingredients one handled might be exceptions and need exceptional treatment.

But he could begin with the theories, and Potter could follow on the individual details when he understood the subject from the base up.

As for the other problem…

Severus knew he could forge a connection with the boy if he explained his memories of Lily and revealed the bond that had existed between him and the woman he loved, his best friend. It would counterbalance the connection between Black and Potter’s father, and that would be all to the good.

But he could not.

The memories he shared with Lily were his. They were for no one else to paw over, not even her son. He could learn more about her from Black and Lupin, if he really wanted to know. He hadn’t asked any extensive questions, so Severus doubted it. Someone who had been an orphan for so long and from such a young age had probably got used to not having parents, anyway, and to dealing with missing memories.

And he did not want to join the general chorus of praise that would pour over Potter as he began to become a hero, to go against the Dark Lord, and to face Dementors and other Dark creatures. If he thought of himself as a hero, he was more likely to take insane risks. He would get all the positive reinforcement he needed from his friends, from Dumbledore, and now from Draco. There had to be someone in his life who would treat him more sternly.

“I will explain more slowly,” Severus said.

Potter seemed to recognize it as the best compromise he’d get. He nodded and picked up the stirring rod again. “That would help.”

If his voice was a bit flat and a bit dull…well, Severus ignored it. The deepest and bitterest truth of the world, and the one it had taken him the longest to accept, was that no one got everything he wanted.

*

Harry had decided they should sit by the lake today. Draco didn’t much care. He was too deliriously happy that Harry had acknowledged that they were friends when he returned from the summer holidays and that he hadn’t lied to the Gryffindors—for long, at least—or ignored Draco.

Eventually, that attitude would wear off, Draco knew, and he would stop acting pathetic simply because one of his childhood dreams had come true. But he was prepared to indulge himself for now. He had so few childhood dreams, and so few ever came true.

Harry was lying on his back under a small tree when Draco arrived. He opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again. Draco sat down next to him and leaned his back against the tree, looking into the lake. He was quietly happy that Harry didn’t think he had to sit up, or draw his wand, or do anything else that would show he considered Draco a threat.

“How was your summer?” Harry asked lazily.

He had asked that before, but their conversation had been interrupted by Granger, who had “accidentally” run into them in the library and declared that she needed to talk to Harry about Charms homework. Draco pulled his legs up and spent a few moments looking for a stone, which he picked up and flung into the lake. “Busy,” he said. “I said that I wanted to learn about more important things, so my father’s telling me about them.”

“Important things?” Harry sounded so gentle and so uninterested that Draco would have been insulted, except he knew it came from that same trust that made Harry lie on his back in Draco’s presence, his wand firmly in his robe pocket.

“Things like what political connections he has, and the Dark Arts spells that he uses most often,” Draco said.

Harry turned his head towards him and opened his eyes. Draco expected to see excitement there, but all he could make out was concern. “Are you sure you should be asking about that? It could be dangerous.”

“I know it could be,” Draco said, a little annoyed that Harry wasn’t happy to have a spy in the middle of a Death Eater house. The thought of what he was doing, and how much Harry would appreciate it, had comforted Draco when he was bored silly by another of Lucius’s meandering, insistent conversations. “But it’s the only way I can help you.”

“Help me do what?” Harry wrinkled his forehead.

Honestly. He really is thick sometimes. “Help you fight the Dark Lord, of course,” Draco said patiently.

Harry sat up then and reached out to put a hand on Draco’s arm. “I don’t want you to choose between your father and me,” he said.

“Are you blind or what?” Draco really was feeling annoyed by now. He pulled away from Harry and ran a hand through his hair. His father and Pansy weren’t around to tell him he was messing it up. “I already did. That was what that confrontation with him last year was all about.”

“But—” Harry looked at the lake, so obviously fumbling for words that Draco wanted to say something. How was he going to be an inspiring public speaker and become Minister, the way that of course he would when he was a hero and had defeated the Dark Lord, if he kept hesitating like that?

“I thought that wasn’t permanent,” Harry said at last. “I thought that was just about one thing, and you could go back to liking him later.”

“I still like him,” Draco said. “I love him. But we aren’t on the same political side anymore. You and I are. And we’re friends.” He held his breath a moment, wondering if Harry was about to deny that again.

“We are,” Harry said, which at least reassured Draco on that score. Harry bowed his head and sat still like that, except for a hand that twitched and opened again and again on his knee, as if he were struggling not to grasp his wand.

“What’s so hard to understand about it?” Draco flung another stone at the lake with great force. “I chose your side. You’re my friend, and I wanted to.”

“But I’m only fighting Voldemort because he killed my parents,” Harry said, and looked up. The expression in his eyes froze Draco. It was so determined, as if he had looked death in the face. And he had, Draco thought, thinking of the basilisk and the Dementors. “I don’t have a choice. You do, just like Ron and Hermione. I mean, I’m grateful for the help, and I know that my friends want to help me, but that doesn’t mean you need to abandon your whole lives and everything you were raised with. I wouldn’t expect Ron to leave his whole family if it turned out that one of them was a Death Eater.”

Draco felt a stirring of deep pity, which, for the first time, wasn’t connected to the thought that Harry had refused his friendship for the Weasel’s. He really doesn’t understand about war.

Draco put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I can’t imagine the Weasleys would become Death Eaters,” he said. “But if one of them did, then either the rest of his family would cast him out, or the whole family would follow the Dark Lord, too, or Wease—Weasley would have to choose you over him. That’s just the way it works, Harry. How can you stay close to someone who’s your best friend’s deadly enemy? This isn’t just a political disagreement. My father disagrees with people and then works with them again. This is war. People will try to kill you.”

“But at least it only has to be me,” Harry insisted. “It doesn’t have to be you, too.”

“You’re not leaving me behind again,” Draco said quietly.

“But war isn’t an adventure—”

“And the adventure was only an excuse, really,” Draco said. “I’ve realized I want something more than that.”

“What?” Harry asked warily. His fringe was hanging in his eyes, making him look half-wild.

“Your company,” Draco said. “Your friendship. To—share.” He had to leave it there, because he couldn’t have listed all the things he wanted to share with Harry if he talked for an hour. “So I’ll be with you. And you can try to leave me behind, but you’d have to tie up my legs and my arms and break my wand. Much easier just to have me with you, right?”

And maybe Harry didn’t understand about war, and maybe he still thought the sacrifice Draco was making was wrong, but he had a slow warm smile that, right then, made Draco feel any sacrifices were worth it.

*

“Severus.”

“Igor.”

It was no use trying to avoid Karkaroff. Severus already knew that. What he had done was catch the man’s eye shortly after the Durmstrang contingent arrived, and then stand up from the High Table a bit early. Karkaroff had followed him, of course, and now they stood together in a dungeon corridor not far from Severus’s office.

Karkaroff had changed less than Severus would have thought he had. He hadn’t tried to hide his hair color, his eyes, or anything else from the past, at least, except for the thick glamour spells Severus could sense wound about the Dark Mark on his arm. Severus disdained such things as long as the Mark was a dormant, barely noticeable scar. Such spells were more likely to attract the attention of anyone with sensitivity.

Of course, considering the magical signatures of most of his students, Severus supposed Karkaroffhe did not often need to worry about that. He was glad that Lucius had not sent Draco to Durmstrang, as he knew Lucius had once considered doing. A young child’s magical signature could expand or fluctuate, contract or change, in association with many other children’s. Draco had become more powerful at Hogwarts, where he was surrounded by powerful professors and older students, than he would have been under Karkaroff’s tutelage.

And part of that probably came from Karkaroff carefully directing the teaching so that none of his students would challenge him at a duel. He was unchanged in mind or attitude, either.

“Have you felt it?” Karkaroff demanded, leaning forwards.

Severus raised an eyebrow. “Felt what?”

“The tingles in your arm,” Karkaroff said. “The flashes of phantom pain.” He hesitated, then leaned even nearer and hissed, “The visions.”

“No,” Severus said, though a cold hand opened and engulfed his spine. “You are deceiving yourself as usual, Igor.” He folded his arms.

“He is awake again,” Karkaroff insisted, “and on the move.” Though he folded his arms in answer, it looked more as if he were trying to comfort himself than anything else. “It is foolish to ignore this.”

“I have felt nothing,” Severus insisted. And he truly had not. He knew Pettigrew stood a chance of finding and resurrecting the Dark Lord, but on the other hand, though the Dark Lord would certainly know that magic, he was not in a state that would allow him to perform the physical spells. And Pettigrew’s skill, if enough to become an unregistered Animagus, was not enough by itself to reach those heights of evil.

Evil. There was little in the world that Severus would call by that word, knowing how many times his Slytherins and ordinary human behavior had been named evil.

The magic the Dark Lord studied was part of that little.

“You are not lying to me?” Karkaroff’s eyes searched Severus’s face intently.

“I am not.” I will not tell him about Pettigrew. He has offered me no information worth the trade, and it would only panic him.

“Then, perhaps…” Karkaroff trailed off, and didn’t tell Severus what he thought the visions and pains might be instead. He simply turned around and walked away.

Severus was just as glad. He did not wish to be entangled with the Death Eaters again. He had done enough spying to pay his debt to Dumbledore, and he did not like the constant pressure and discomfort of such a life. No one had fun among the Death Eaters save those, like Macnair, for whom the opportunity to cause pain was enough.

And there was the constant reminder, every time his left arm brushed against a sleeve or a wall or a shelf, that the reason he had lost Lily was forever branded on his skin.

*

Draco was avoiding him, and Harry had no idea why.

Of course, in the last few days that school had gone mad with the arrival of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students, and Harry reckoned that it was easy for someone whose House they were living with to get distracted by Viktor Krum. He hadn’t been able to go to the Quidditch World Cup—Uncle Vernon’s petty revenge for Sirius’s letters—but he’d heard Ron describe Krum’s playing. Harry fervently hoped that he would get to see it happen, though Quidditch at Hogwarts had been canceled for the year.

Meanwhile, the rest of his life seemed ordinary enough. Ron sometimes grumbled about Draco, but mainly, seemed to think that not mentioning him would make him go away. Hermione was researching the history of the Triwizard Tournament and, now, age-lines. In a way, Harry admired her, because she only had to hear about or see something and then she was interested in and researching it. But he found the thought of it exhausting. He didn’t have that much energy.

Draco finally went past him as they were leaving Care of Magical Creatures, and Harry took the chance to step in at his side, since Crabbe and Goyle were trailing behind. Draco didn’t notice the change at first; he was looking at the ground and frowning all the while.

Then he looked up and saw Harry, and his face contorted and turned ugly. “What are you doing here?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

“I wanted to know why you haven’t been talking to me,” said Harry. “If I offended you by talking about your father—”

Draco laughed, and the sound was one he would have made last year, back when Buckbeak attacked him. “You have no idea, do you?” he demanded. “None at all?”

“Er, no,” Harry said, and then turned around and stepped in front of Draco. “So tell me.”

Draco clenched his fists and fumed for a moment, clearly wanting to keep silent. But Harry had learned that just looking bored would make Draco burst out with something. He hated it when there was a chance he might not have Harry’s or Snape’s attention.

“You’ve been staring at her the entire time,” Draco said, and pointed across the grounds.

Bewildered, Harry followed the direction of his finger, and saw Cho Chang walking with several of her friends. She laughed and tossed her hair back, and Harry felt a smile creep across his lips.

“See?” Draco said, in highly aggrieved tones.

“Do you like her?” Harry looked at him curiously. He’d never noticed Draco paying any attention to Cho, but he could have missed it. According to both Draco and Snape, he missed a lot.

“No!”

And then Draco pushed past him and ran madly towards the school. Crabbe and Goyle followed him with mildly threatening scowls at Harry, as if they didn’t know whether he was an enemy or not, but didn’t want to take any chances.

Harry blinked, and dropped slowly back to join Ron and Hermione, who asked him questions he couldn’t answer.

*

Draco had managed to control himself by the time he came down to dinner, but he didn’t look at the Gryffindor table. He wouldn’t give Harry the satisfaction of thinking that he could possibly play around with Draco’s attention like that.

Besides, Harry would just be staring at the Chang girl again.

Moodily, Draco spooned carrots onto his plate and then mashed them into unidentifiable pieces. He couldn’t even say why Harry staring at Chang made him so angry, except that it did. He felt that he should have the first claim on Harry’s attention after his friends, and Chang got too much of it. And then Harry didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it, and asked if Draco liked her.

Draco snorted. She’s skinny and self-absorbed and too pretty. Why would I like her?

He just wanted his fair share of Harry’s time, that was all. And Harry still didn’t realize when he was withholding himself and treating Draco differently than he did Granger and the Weasel.

At least he had the choosing of the Hogwarts Champions to watch. He was completely unsurprised when Viktor Krum was chosen for Durmstrang. It had become obvious, after spending a few days around those students, that Krum was the best of them, magically and physically and intellectually.

A beautiful girl, probably half-Veela, was chosen for Beauxbatons. Draco found it hard to pull his eyes away from her as she went to the front of the room. He wouldn’t have blamed Harry if he was interested in someone like that.

And then a Hufflepuff, of all people, was chosen for Hogwarts. Draco had to stop rolling his eyes after a moment, or they would have rolled out of his head. The Goblet had no sense at all. Well, of course not, it was a mindless magic artifact. He felt silly now for having anticipated its choice so keenly.

He was about to turn back to his dinner when a fourth piece of paper shot out of the Goblet and into Dumbledore’s hand. The Headmaster first looked surprised, then grave, as he read it. When he looked up, it was to stare at the Gryffindor table with an expression of pity on his face.

“And Harry Potter,” he said, with some difficulty, “is second Champion for Hogwarts.”

Amid the roar of sound that erupted around him—among the Slytherins, it was mostly exclamations of envy and speculation about how he could have cheated the age line—Draco stared at Harry, too, betrayed. Harry hadn’t told him about that, but he’d probably told the Mudblood.

But then he saw Harry’s shocked expression, and the way the Weasel was leaning away from him and the Mudblood was staring at him in concern, and a conviction grew up rapidly in Draco’s mind.

He didn’t know about this. He doesn’t know what’s happening.

And now he’ll have to compete in a tournament full of dangerous challenges.

This wasn’t his fault. It’s the Dark Lord trying to kill him again.

And the conviction turned into a resolve to support Harry as fully as he could. The Weasel couldn’t do that, from his reaction; the Mudblood was a girl and would get in the way; Chang didn’t know Harry well enough. Snape would decide Harry was arrogant and had somehow managed it on his own. (Snape seemed to think Harry was incompetent half the time and too competent the rest, which didn’t help him teach Harry). Draco was the one with the best chance and the best reason to help him.

Everything will be all right, after all, Draco thought, half to himself and half to Harry, as Harry rose slowly to his feet and walked into the room off the Great Hall where the other Champions had gathered. I’ll have you, and you’ll have me.

And who else do we need?

Chapter 11.