“I swear to God, Harry, I thought I
was doing the right thing.”
The Best of
Intentions
By:
silvermisery
01 Prologue:
Three Pieces Of Shredded Boomslang Skin
Disclaimer: If Harry Potter belonged
to me, there would be a lot more Hermione-Draco action going on, Snape would so
not have died, and Remus and Tonks would be happily making a lot of little
babies. Oh, and the Weasleys would all be dead.
A/N: Pay attention to the dialogue,
there’s an important tidbit of info there. And I can’t believe I’m starting another
fic, but Far Far Better is on hiatus until I get past a huge writer’s block.
Sorry. Just—read this please. One sided
H/Hr, one sided D/Hr. Not slash. I swear.
It started
with three pieces of shredded Boomslang skin.
Potions had
been as frustrating as usual, due to the combination of it being the first
class after the weekend, Harry’s less-than-stellar Potions skills, and Snape’s
ever-present snarkiness. By the time they have moved on to the actual practical
in the Double Potions class, Harry had been ready to chuck the whole bloody
cauldron at Snape’s head, call it an accident, and skip out, regardless of the
consequences, and only Hermione’s restraining hand on his elbow had kept him
from doing something unforgivable.
“How many
pieces of Boomslang?” he asked quietly to Hermione, who was busily flipping
through her notes. “Oh, six,” she said carelessly as she continued scratching
out mistaken or sloppily written words.
“Six?” he asked sharply. “Not three?”
“Yes,
six—why?” she asked, looking up suddenly.
“Damnit!” he
cursed.
“Oh Harry,
you got three, didn’t you?” she said in the slightly exasperated, worried, but
caring tone she tended to use around him ever since Sirius had died.
“Yeah,” he
mumbled, feeling guilty that it would be his fault that her perfect grade would
be messed up.
“Oh well,”
she said optimistically, “I think if we maybe put some extra shrivelfig, it
might counteract it…won’t be perfect, it’ll be slightly too thick, but—”
A pale,
perfectly manicured hand intruded upon their conversation, and both Harry and
Hermione looked up in astonishment at Draco Malfoy. He stood with his natural
feline grace, leaning slightly against their double desk with one hand
outstretched.
“What do you
want, Malfoy?” Harry spat.
Malfoy’s
blond eyebrows arched expressively, and his grey eyes slid pointedly down to
his long, aristocratic fingers. Automatically, the Gryffindors’ eyes followed
his to the white palm
Nestled
among the folds of albino skin were three small pieces of shredded Boomslang
skin.
“I had three
too many,” he said in his lazy drawl. And dropped them, one by one, on Harry’s
desk before he sauntered off.
Harry and
Hermione stood staring after him, mouths gaping, before Hermione visibly
collected herself and said uncertainly, “Well…I suppose we should…” her hand
made a half-hearted effort to collect them, but Ron, who had been watching from
across the aisle, stopped her before she could drop them in the cauldron.
“Are you
mad?” he demanded in a hissing whisper. “That was Malfoy who just walked by! He probably—poisoned them or something!”
“Yeah—yeah,
you’re right,” she murmured. “I’ll just—”
Before she
could Banish them, Harry had deftly swiped the ingredients from her hand and
dropped them in the cauldron.
“What the
bleeding hell did you do that for?” yelped Ron.
Harry looked
up and frowned, his forehead creasing slightly in a very distracting way,
thought Hermione. “I don’t know,” he said confusedly.
“Watch your
cauldron explode,” Ron muttered. “It’s your funeral, but you might at least
have thought about Hermione’s grade before you went and did that.”
Harry’s
green eyes filled with guilt, and he turned swiftly to Hermione. “I’m sorry,
Mione, I didn’t think—”
“No,” she
cut him off. “No, Harry, it’s fine,” she repeated, not letting her slight exasperation
show. She could never resist him when he looked like that.
To
Ron’s—and, though she would never admit it—Hermione’s surprise, the potion
turned out perfectly. “See?” Harry grinned. “I told you we could trust Malfoy!
Besides, he hasn’t done anything this year, not much.”
“Probably
just scared we’d hex him again like we did on the train,” Ron laughed coarsely.
But Harry
was listening to Snape’s voice drawl, “Too thick, Mr. Malfoy. Not at all up to
your usual standards. Half marks.”
The Best of Intentions
By:
silvermisery
02 Chapter
One: Midnight Meetings
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah not mine
blah blah blah.
A/N: One sided H/Hr, one sided D/Hr.
Not slash. I swear.
It started
with Boomslang skin. But it didn’t, as Hermione wanted it to, end there. The
next day, during Charms, when they were trying to make wine, it was Malfoy who
leaned over and said helpfully, “You’re not moving your wrist enough, Potter.
You have to swish it a little more. And it’s Ar-ceh-REH-bus, not Ar-CEH-reh-bus.”
“Shut the hell
up, Malfoy,” snarled Ron. “Harry doesn’t need your sodding advice. Do it
yourself, then, if you’re so smart.”
“All right,
then,” said Malfoy mildly. He rolled up his sleeves, swished his wrist, and
said, lazily, “Arcerebus.” The glass
filled with blood-red wine, and Malfoy coolly took a sip. “Mmm,” he remarked.
“1894 Champagne. Good year.”
Ron’s face
turned red, and Hermione, who had been about to give Harry the same advice, had
to hold him back, but she couldn’t help thinking about a similar instance back
in first year, with a little girl with buck teeth and a certain charm called Wingardium Leviosa. Very coolly, Malfoy
looked over and gave her a wink, and Hermione knew he was remembering it too.
The cheeky bastard.
What with
all the déjà vu, she never thought to look over at Harry.
When she
did, his attention was firmly focused on his empty glass, and she never
wondered what he might have been thinking for those few minutes her attention
was turned elsewhere.
***
“Oy, Harry. Harry. HARRY!” Ron gazed in exasperation at his black-haired,
oblivious friend.
“Harry,”
Hermione said, shaking him slightly.
“Oh,
uh—whazzat?” Harry looked up startled, as if waking up from a deep sleep, his
green eyes muddled and clouded.
“You’re
doing it again!” accused the redhead.
“What?”
asked Harry.
“You were
staring at Malfoy again, Harry,” Hermione clarified gently.
“Oh,” he
said blankly.
“What is it
with you and the ferret?” asked Ron heatedly.
Hermione
looked at him with eyebrows raised, waiting for the answer.
Harry
shrugged, infuriatingly. “I don’t know,” he said simply, and then headed off
any further questions by stuffing a bread roll in his mouth.
Ron and
Hermione looked at each other, worry clearly written all over their faces, but
Harry was too busy sneaking glances at Malfoy to notice.
***
“Shit!”
Harry skidded to a stop just before crashing into a stone gargoyle outside the
DADA classroom. He would have been on time, but something was terribly
distracting, Malfoys being unaccountably nice all over the place was barring
his concentration…
He would
have been on time, even early. Only that damned Malfoy had smiled at him—smiled at him—and waggled his hand a bit
and said, “Hello,” and Harry had stood there staring stupidly after him like
the biggest prat that ever lived.
And then
he’d realized that he was dangerously close to being late, and had had to rush
off. Stumbling in the classroom, it didn’t help his feelings any that Malfoy
was sitting elegantly back in his chair, with his notes, textbook, inkwell, and
quill spread neatly before him and his wand out by his side.
“Wotcher,
Harry!” said Tonks, the current DADA professor, along with Remus.
“Hey,
Tonks,” he grinned weakly at her, feeling guilty that he was late. She was so
nice to him. Her bubblegum-pink hair was hurting his eyes slightly.
“Sit down,
Harry…um…over there, why don’t you go next to Malfoy?”
From next to
Hermione, just before Malfoy, Ron gave an audible groan, but Harry just sighed
and trudged over to the empty seat next to Malfoy’s. What the hell, he decided,
the day was Malfoy-esque enough already, it almost figured he would have to sit
next to the prat.
The
Slytherin did not look up as he put down his textbooks and did not acknowledge
him in any way except to sweep off a few sheets of parchment that were
encroaching on Harry’s part of the desk. His blond head was bent over a
textbook, and from time to time his hand came up to sweep a lock of hair off
his forehead. The lock, however, stubbornly refused to stay down, and after
about the fifteenth time in less than two minutes, Malfoy’s head came up in
exasperation as he muttered, “I’m getting this cut. It’s really ridiculous.”
“Like
everything else about you?” Harry asked, but the look Malfoy leveled on him
made him feel small and slightly ashamed of himself, and he ducked his head as
Tonks said,
“Turn to
page 193,” and resigned himself to a long, difficult lesson.
“Harry,”
Hermione came running up to him after the DADA lesson was finished. “Are you
all right?”
“Yeah,” he
muttered without much heart in it.
“Did that
git Malfoy bother you?”
“Actually,
no,” he said.
He had. Not
intentionally, but there was just something curiously unignorable about Malfoy.
He was too shiny. Like flashy disco lights when you were walking down a street.
He turned heads everywhere he went. Just something about him that made him
impossible to fade in the background, and as a result, Harry had been
completely unable to focus on a word Tonks had said in her admittedly
interesting lecture; he’d have to ask Hermione later.
“What’s that
in your pocket?” asked Hermione.
Harry
blinked and looked down. A scrap of parchment was in his pocket, and he pulled
it out and read the flowing, almost calligraphic script on it.
Harry, it said. By now, I’m
sure you’re incredibly confused and fed up by my abnormal niceness. If you want
explanations, meet me in the abandoned Charms classroom after curfew. Don’t
give me any gobshite about breaking rules; I know about your invisibility
cloak.
— DM—
He should
tell Hermione and Ron about this. He should not go. Malfoy had done this
before, in first year, for the duel he had never shown up for. He should tear
the note up.
“Nothing,”
he said carelessly, and slipped it back in his pocket.
But long
after Ron had forgotten all about it, Hermione stood gazing out of the Gryffindor
common room window after curfew, wondering where she had seen that parchment
before. That fancy, almost invisible watermark on it…that light scent of spring
and rain and mint…that fine, almost velvety texture…expensive aura…she sat bolt
upright. Expensive. Oh God. Malfoy.
She ran to
find Harry.
***
Meanwhile,
the object of her search was currently traversing the corridors of Hogwarts,
huddled under a certain shimmery, silvery cloak. Why on earth he was doing this,
he had no idea, but comforted himself with the knowledge that he could always
hide himself under the Invisibility cloak so that Malfoy could not find or get
him in trouble like last time. Though he had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs.
Norris might be able to see through his cloak.
“I solemnly
swear that I am up to no good,” he whispered as he touched his wand to a blank
piece of parchment, produced from its permanent residence from under his robes.
The thin, spidery lines of ink slowly made their way across the parchment, and
he scanned it, eyes darting from left to right.
“Filch,
Snape,” he muttered. “McGonagall, Remus—hang on, aren’t those Tonks’ rooms—oh
God,” he swallowed, feeling his cheeks flush. “Uh, moving on, where is he,
where is he—oh, there he is.”
The dot
labeled Draco Malfoy was pacing in
the abandoned Charms classroom.
“Bingo,” he
muttered, an American expression he’d picked up from Hermione’s reality shows
on television. “What do you know, he showed up after all.” Of course, that was
not to say the Slytherin might not have some other prank up his sleeve. But
still—he was there. That had to count for something. Keeping the Map out in
case he ran into Filch or Snape, he made his way slowly up to the classroom,
his wand at the ready.
***
“Bloody
Potter,” Draco snarled as he paced swiftly from one side of the room to the
other. He was a pacer; he always had been, and even Lucius’s extensive training
had not wholly wiped this trait from him. His mother had called him as much a
Black as a Malfoy, and maybe she had been right, though for a long time he had
not wanted to believe her. He was a blazing fire, tightly controlled by bonds
of ice, and he did not like it when things did not go his way.
Potter was
late. His lip curled.
Not that
this was new; the stupid Gryffindor was always late, but Draco could not help
wondering whether or not the reckless boy would even come. Certainly his
behavior along the past six years had given him no reason to do so. And how
could Potter know that this time, he was for real?
In the midst
of his pacing, he was suddenly violently caught and thrown back, his head
striking the wall hard. Sudden tears from the pain clouded his eyes, and he
blinked hard as he squinted, trying to make out his attacker. Though he could feel
fingers choking his windpipe, he saw no one, and that could mean only one
thing.
“Potter?”
***
Harry had
drawn close to the Slytherin, watching him pace. The other boy moved like a
cat, or a wolf, with all the easy, lethal grace of a predator. As he was
wondering whether to show himself or to stay silent, he saw Malfoy’s lip curl.
A shiver passed through him; Malfoy’s grey eyes were staring directly at him.
Could he see him? No, that was impossible—no one could see through an
invisibility cloak.
Dumbledore could, he thought, and then, who knows what that sneaky Slytherin came up
with now?
And without
stopping to think about it, he pounced.
The other
boy’s body was pliant under his hands, and he felt a surge of exultation as he
shoved Malfoy’s head back into the wall, jerking him back by the hair.
“Potter? What
the hell are you—ah!” he gasped, as Harry bent him over further. “Bastard!” he
gasped. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I just wanted to talk!”
Harry let
him go, slightly ashamed, but too fired up by blood lust to really care much.
“What?” he
asked.
“God,
Potter, you’re acting as hormonal as a pregnant woman!” gasped Malfoy.
Harry
narrowed his eyes, and Malfoy held up his hands. “All right, all right. Geez.
Touchy much? I just wanted to call a truce.”
“A what?”
“A truce,
Potter, it’s spelled t-r-u-c-e and it means a cessation of hostilities. No more
fighting. You know, those little things that do happen once in a while and I
think might be sensible for us. Since, after all, we have more important things
to do.”
“Like?”
“Oh, am I
that important to you, Potter? I’m touched, really I am, but incidentally, you do have this unimportant person called
Voldemort, a.k.a. the Dark Lord, after you, and I have family obligations, blah
blah blah.”
“You called
him Voldemort?” Harry asked. This whole thing was unreal, he thought. Meeting
up with Malfoy after curfew. Not hexing him to death on sight. Why not add,
have a civil conversation onto the list? The world was already topsy-turvy,
might as well send it flying with a nice kick.
“It happens
from time to time,” said Malfoy, who Harry was beginning to think might
actually be able to best Hermione at sarcasm. “Well, what do you say?”
“Whazzat?”
asked Harry, finally losing all control of his tongue.
“You silver-tongued
Lothario,” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Are you agreeing to the truce, or not?”
Harry could hear him adding a comma after the truce.
“Oh—um, all
right, I guess,” he said.
“Show a
little less enthusiasm, why don’t you?” Malfoy shook his head, his pale blond
hair gleaming. “Whatever, Harry, see
you around.” And he slipped out, leaving Harry with the distinct feeling that
he was missing something here.
***
The Best of
Intentions
By:
silvermisery
03 Chapter
Two: That One Man Should Die For The People
Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter.
Shocker, I know.
A/N: One sided H/Hr, one sided D/Hr.
Not slash. I swear. Title from the Bible, John 11:50: Nor consider that it is
expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole
nation perish not.
It wasn’t
much of a truce, at first. There were no more huge brawls or fistfights, but
since Malfoy had laid off those since last year, not much had changed—openly.
However, there was a subtle difference in their daily interaction. When Malfoy’s
eyes danced with glee at Harry’s mistakes in Potions, Harry’s “Sod off,
Malfoy,” was more casual. Affectionate, almost, the way he would say it to Ron,
or even Hermione if she hadn’t been a girl.
When Malfoy
struggled with Transfiguration—never his strong point—Harry would grin, and
Malfoy’s rejoining “Go bugger yourself, Potter,” was almost friendly.
And then
there was the momentous day when Draco Malfoy showed up at the Gryffindor
common room and asked for Harry Potter.
It had
started with Colin Creevey running to the Gryffindor sixth year boys’ dorm,
where Dean, Ron, Seamus, and Harry were playing Exploding Snap while Neville
did his homework. “Harry, Harry!” he yelled.
“Hide me,”
Harry groaned.
“Malfoy’s
outside the Fat Lady, and he’s asking for you!”
Pandemonium
ensued. Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan were asking each other loudly what this
could mean. Neville had jumped at the mention of Malfoy and knocked over his
inkwell, and now he was scrambling around frantically trying to clean it up and
salvage what remainder of his Potions essay he could. Ron was slowly turning
red, and the tips of his ears were tinged purple, never a good sign. Outside,
Ginny was screeching about stupid Malfoys. Hermione came running up, her face
determined, demanding,
“Harry James
Potter, I have put up and put up with your lame excuses. I demand to know what on earth is going on with you and
Malfoy!”
“Er, later,
Mione, Ron,” Harry said awkwardly, made his excuses to Dean and Seamus, advised
Neville to use Scourgify, and fairly
ran out of the Gryffindor common room and leaped out of the Fat Lady, almost
colliding with Malfoy.
“What the
hell do you want?” Harry demanded. “You’re stirring up a ruckus in there,” he
indicated the Gryffindor common room by jerking his head back.
“D’you want
to play Seeker-to-Seeker?”
The request
was so unexpected that for a moment Harry just stood there, staring stupidly at
him.
“I mean—you
don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Malfoy added quickly. “I just—I’m new at
this friends thing, and I thought this might be what friends do, but if—”
“Nah,” said
Harry, suddenly feeling stupidly happy. “Nah, let’s go.”
On their way
to get their brooms, Harry asked, “Didn’t you ever have any friends?”
“Well—yeah,”
Malfoy said. “But Slytherin friends are kinda different from other friends. We
lie a lot and manipulate and connive and steal, and we never come right out and
say what we mean, but we always watch out for each other’s backs.”
“That’s
awful!” Harry said.
A mask fell
shut over Malfoy’s face. Harry hadn’t even noticed that it had been gone, but
now that it was back, he realized that Malfoy’s face had been more open than he
had ever seen it.
“Not
really,” Malfoy pointed out evenly. “We always
watch out for each other’s backs. Even when our beliefs differ. “
“The Blacks
disowned Sirius for not becoming a Death Eater,” Harry responded. Proud that he
could say Sirius’s name now without stumbling, he almost missed what Malfoy
said next.
“That’s
different. That was family.”
“Isn’t
family supposed to be more supportive?”
“Yes. You’re
supposed to support your family’s beliefs unconditionally. Your family’s honor.
Sirius was old enough to know what he was doing and what he meant when he
turned away from his family’s creed. He knew what it would entail.”
Harry glanced
incredulously at Malfoy. His face was pure iron. Judging that he would not get
any more answers from this source, he changed the subject.
“What are we
going to do for a Snitch?”
Just as
quickly as Malfoy’s face had shut down, now it lit up with pure, simple
enjoyment. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
***
And it was
as simple as that. They spent the afternoon chasing about after the Snitch, and
Harry realized with surprise that when Malfoy wasn’t busy directing the other
players on his team, since he was the unofficial captain or snarling with rage
at Harry himself, he was really a fairly decent Seeker. He caught the Snitch
three times out of seven, and when they started to head back as it got dark,
Harry was surprised, and said as much to Draco, who only laughed and asked,
“Did you really think Professor Snape would let me buy my way onto the
Slytherin team?”
“Well…” said
Harry.
“That’s not
our way, Harry,” Malfoy said seriously. “We’re Slytherin, remember? Those of
great ambition. We operate based on ability. Of course money and family name
affect ability, so we count that in. But basically, it’s all about what you can
do and how well you do it.”
“It sounds
like a lonely way to live,” Harry muttered before he could stop himself.
“It is,”
said Malfoy wistfully. “But it has its compensations. We’re at your dorms now,”
he said quickly.
“Um. I
guess—goodbye, then,” tried Harry, then screwed up his face in a grimace. “Ugh,
this all feels so wrong. I’m saying goodbye to a Slytherin.”
To his
surprise, Malfoy just laughed and waved him on into the dorms. Harry sighed and
squared his shoulders, bracing himself for a long, long talk.
***
Hermione
Jane Granger was furious. No, she wasn’t, not completely. She was hurt. How could Harry do that to her, to Ron? Weren’t
they his best friends since way back in first year? Hadn’t she stuck by him
through thick and thin, even if he hadn’t stuck by her all the time? Wasn’t
she—in love with him—like a sister to
him?
She’d
thought they had something—had fooled herself into believing that sometimes
when he looked at her through half-shut eyes and he tilted his head and the
light was just right, sometimes there was something in his eyes—thought he
might, maybe, possibly—return her feelings—like her back.
And then he
went and ditched her. For Malfoy. Without a word of explanation. Not even a,
“So long.” Just total silence and absence until she felt she didn’t know her
best friend at all. Just an empty shell who stared at her with those criminally
green eyes until she couldn’t think straight anymore.
So she
waited calmly in the common room, long after everyone else—besides Ron—had gone
off to dinner, waiting for Harry to come back. Like she always did. Waiting so
she could pick up the pieces yet one more time, hoping that maybe, maybe this
time Harry would see what she did for him and that they fit together, like two
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Waited with
a level face and hard, hurt brown eyes.
When he
finally did come in, it was late. Almost curfew. The other Gryffindors had long
since come back from dinner, but they had taken one look at Hermione’s and
Ron’s hard faces, and had cleared out, heading up to the dorms to talk quietly,
sleep, or do homework, all ears tensed for the confrontation sure to occur.
Hermione
noticed that his hair was windswept, giving him that goodlooking—sexy—Quidditch hair, and she reflected
that only she would think that having his hair messier than usual was sexy. His
glasses were askew on his face and he had that look of sheer exultation of his
face that he always did after flying. Somewhere deep down, Hermione wished that
she could cause that look on his
face, but she firmly pushed the feeling aside and focused on the task at hand.
Harry took
one look at their faces and knew he was in trouble.
“Look, guys—”
he began, but Hermione cut him off.
“Where have
you been?”
“If you’ll
just let me explain—”
“Answer the
question, Harry,” Hermione said in a dangerous tone that her mother used to say
made her sound like a lawyer.
He sighed,
defeated. “Flying with Malfoy,” he said.
“Are you
friends with him?”
“I—look, I
don’t know. Really. We’re sort of friends, not like you and Ron, but
just—something different, all right? It’s more like we have a truce.”
“And you
regularly go flying all day with people you have truces with?”
“Um—it’s a
truce now, I didn’t say it couldn’t
become something more.”
“Are you in
love with him?” the question was bluntly put, for Hermione, and it was so
unexpected that Harry blinked for several long seconds.
“Wha—no! I’m
not even gay!” It was true. He had never looked at Malfoy in that way before, or indeed any other
guy. He was totally and happily straight. It seemed to him that Hermione had a
relieved look on her face, but it was gone before he could really be sure.
“Okay, then
what do you see in him?” Ron demanded.
“I dunno,”
Harry said softly. “It’s just—I think he might be wanting to change, for real.
Think how nice it would be without Malfoy plaguing us all the time, guys!”
“I don’t
have anything against that,” Hermione said. “It’s just that you seem to be
obsessed with him!”
“I’m not, I
swear,” Harry said.
Hermione
raised her eyebrow, but let it go at that. She was just too relieved that her
Harry—when had she started thinking of
him as her Harry—was totally and happily straight to push him. Later she
would press him for information. All she wanted to do now was walk on wobbly
legs to her bed and fall down and sleep and sleep and sleep as she hadn’t done
for a month, ever since Malfoy had dropped three pieces of Boomslang skin on Harry’s
desk.
***
Albus
Dumbledore finished listening to Fawkes and frowned, staring off into the
distance thoughtfully as he stroked his beard. Really he should get it cut, it
was getting ridiculously long. This grandfatherly look was all well and good,
but there were limits. Any longer and he’d begin to look like a male Rapunzel.
Well, a male, incredibly old, and wrinkly Rapunzel.
But this
business with the Malfoy boy was beginning to become worrisome. He was getting
too close to Harry, much too close to Harry, and Albus didn’t like it. Not one
bit. Malfoys had never been good news, Albus remembered Abraxas, or was it
Gabriel, who stole all his lemon drops and replaced them with Bertie Botts’
Every Flavour Beans instead—all the yellow ones. He had never quite
forgiven—Gabriel, he was sure now, it was Gabriel, the one right before
Abraxas, and the following ones had been even worse. He would never forget the
time James had come running to him because Lucius had discovered the secret of
Remus’s lycanthropy and had threatened to blackmail James with it.
And
Draco—Draco Abraxas Raphael Malfoy was the worst of them all, and now he was
seducing Harry to the Dark side. Which was Not Good for Albus’s plans at all,
Not Good At All.
Yes, Draco
Malfoy would have to be dealt with, and dealt with soon, before this
inconvenient and quite frankly embarrassing almost-friendship between the boys
grew into something more. Albus knew Harry, and he knew that once the dear boy
had gotten his teeth into something, he wouldn’t let it go. And he was
intensely loyal to his friends.
His
friends…perhaps that was the key…Albus smiled as he considered his options.
Someone highly intelligent, capable of the subtlety necessary for such an
operation, someone close to Harry, someone naïve and idealistic and easily
gullible to someone in authority whom she trusted, someone of the right
sex….someone who would allow her mind to overcome her heart…someone who loved
Harry with all her heart.
He smiled
and held out his hand for Fawkes. “Lemon drops?”
***
Life went
on. Harry and Draco spent more and more time together, playing
Seeker-to-Seeker, Wizard Chess, Exploding Snape, studying, or just hanging out
and talking. Harry showed Draco the pear to tickle to sneak into the kitchens,
and Draco showed Harry the secret way into the prefect’s bathroom. Harry told
Draco about the Marauder’s Map, and Draco told him about the way to get into
any dormitory in any House—even the girls’.
Ron muttered
darkly and glowered at everybody who came near, choosing to hover and talk to
Dean and Seamus instead. Hermione chewed her nails and immersed herself in her
study, choosing to ignore the way Harry’s face lit up when he saw that shock of
blond hair and refusing to acknowledge what she was beginning to realize—that
even if Harry didn’t love Malfoy in that way,
she could still lose him to the Slytherin git—that she was doing so every day. And
Ginny laughed and flirted with him when he came up to the common room and said
airily to anyone who asked—and to several who didn’t, “He might be a Slytherin,
but he’s damn hot!”
Only he
wasn’t. His nose was too pointed and his cheekbones too high, his face all hard
angles and his eyes too large. He couldn’t get a tan to save his life, and he
was rather skinny and not as tall as he had been before everyone else caught
up. But his skin glowed with a sort of inner light, and his hair was silver and
shiny, and his pointy nose and high cheekbones seemed to fade in the way his
eyes shone and his hands moved with a sort of feline grace as he did imitations
of Colin Creevey in the Great Hall.
And Hermione
hated him. Hated him with all her heart, because in just six months he had done
what she in six years had been unable to do—find the way into Harry’s heart. She
looked out the window at the two boys as they laughed and tussled on the grass,
their brooms flung carelessly outside. As she watched, Harry flung a handful of
grass on Malfoy’s hair, and the poncy git shrieked and clawed wildly at the
gleaming locks while Harry rolled about laughing.
Harry’s hair
was tousled, and his cheeks were flushed from laughing, and he clutched at his
sides because it hurt, and his face was alive and open with Malfoy as it had
never been with her, and she loved him so much it hurt.
“Granger?”
She looked
up. Raqueleene Perrys, a Gryffindor seventh-year, stood looking down her nose
at her, like she tended to do to most sixth-years and below. “The Headmaster
wants to see you. The new password is ‘Snickers.’” With a toss of her long
black hair, the pretty but superbly snooty girl flounced off.
Hermione
blinked, feeling rather bemused, as most people did after a dose of Raqueleene.
Then she got up and headed for the ugly gargoyle, wondering what on earth the
Headmaster would want with her, and hoping fervently that it was nothing to do
with a certain excursion into the Restricted Section to find out for Harry what
Mordsmodre did.
“Miss
Granger?”
“Yes,
Headmaster?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap as she sat across the old
desk from the Headmaster. Albus Percival
Wulfric Brian Dumbledore stared at her with those twinkling blue eyes that
always made her feel as though she was an eager first-year again.
“I have a
task for you.” Hermione blinked again. These were the last words she had
expected to hear from the Headmaster. Seconds ticked by as the words slowly
filtered into her brain, processed and reprocessed as her mind drew and
extracted every bit of information she could from them, until they sunk,
irretrievable, into herself. Then she looked up.
“I am not
ordering you to do this, Miss Granger. You may not want to do this. I will
understand perfectly. It is a voluntary task only. But word of this, whether or
not you accept, cannot leave this room. Do you understand, Miss Granger?” His
eyes were very clear as they met hers directly over the bowl of lemon drops on
his desk.
“Perfectly,
Headmaster,” she answered. “What is the task?”
“I want you
to eliminate Draco Malfoy.”
The words
fell harshly on the sudden silence permeating the air. Hermione was suddenly
acutely aware of everything; the slight breeze that flickered throughout the
office, the red and gold phoenix perched on the windowsill diagonally opposite
her, the wooden carving on her ornate chair digging into her thighs, a few
unruly strands of her bushy hair clinging to her face, and most of all, the
piercing blue eyes of the man she had revered as the Hero of the Wizarding
World fixed unrelentingly on her.
Her mouth
opened a few inches, but she had nothing to say. No, she had too much to say, words
that were filling her and yet eluded her grasp, ideas and half-formed thoughts
that flitted through her brain too fast for her to fully comprehend them,
confusion and bewilderment and above all, an inability to reconcile those bare,
cruel words with the kind, benevolent man she had known.
“Why?” she
managed finally. There. That was innocuous enough, simple enough for her to get
out.
“Why?
Because, Miss Granger, he is a danger to the Wizarding World.”
“A danger?
But—I don’t understand; he’s Malfoy, I get that, but—a teenage? He’s not even
of age yet, is he? He’s just—Malfoy.”
“Yes. At
first, for six long years, I, too, believed him to be ‘just Malfoy.’ Indeed,
for the past six years, he has only been ‘ just Malfoy.’ But now, things have
changed.”
And just
like that, Hermione understood. “His ‘truce’ with Harry,” she said.
“Yes. Mr.
Malfoy is a dangerous person. Now, his magic is not on the level—nor will it
ever be on the level—of, say, Harry, or Voldemort. His raw power is not very
exceptional. But his skills are something different. I have here a file—“ here
Dumbledore waved his wand gently, and a file of paper drifted down softly onto
the desk in front of Hermione—“that contains much information about Mr.
Malfoy.”
Hermione
flipped through the file. To her surprise and secret consternation, she began
to see a pattern in his grades. Malfoy was not, in fact, as she had supposed, a
lazy, ordinary boy who managed to pass by dint of his father’s connections. He
did have some potential, and he did apply himself. His grades in Potions were,
as she expected, almost all Outstandings. Straight
A’s, she thought to herself. Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms,
Arithmancy, and, surprisingly, History of Magic, was also all either
Outstanding or, more often in History of Magic, Exceeds Expectations. Herbology
at first confused her; his grades seemed to be alternating between merely
Acceptable to Outstanding, without even an EE in between, until she saw the
pattern; anything to do with Potions or other practical things, such as edible
food in the wild, got a stellar grade, while things merely of scientific
interest, such as the Mimbulus
Mimbletonia, were merely average. Interestingly, their study on roses also
got an Outstanding, but Hermione passed over that until later. Transfiguration
as well puzzled her until she realized that the vain peacock only excelled at
things to do with grooming or comfort charms, as well as spells to upgrade the
quality of certain items, but was nothing special at other types of Transfiguration.
She continued flipping through the file.
“Malfoy’s an
Animagus?” she exclaimed, her head flying up to look incredulously at the
Headmaster.
“Ah yes, a
white fox-wolf?” Dumbledore said. “Yes, Mr. Malfoy has been an illegal Animagus
for approximately two years now.”
“But why
didn’t you tell someone and just get him arrested for that?” Hermione asked,
frowning. “Why do you need me?”
“Because Mr.
Malfoy is a minor, Miss Granger,” said Dumbledore. “And because Lucius Malfoy
is an important man in the Ministry.”
“Of course,”
she muttered, then looked up from her perusal of the file, determining to
finish it later. “What do you want me to do?”
Dumbledore
smiled, his lined face breaking into a collection of laugh wrinkles. “I knew I
could count on you, Miss Granger,” he said. “I need you to—remove him from the
scene, so to speak. We don’t know why he’s making friends with Harry yet, but
we do know it is not for Harry’s benefit. We need him away from Hogwarts, and
away in such a manner that Harry does not know or care, and so that he cannot
contact the dear boy again—or anyone else, for that matter.”
“You mean—”
but Hermione found that the word would not come out. It would be too
irrevocable, too unchangeable. The last betrayal of the naive, idealistic
first-year who had been so enchanted at the idea that magic could be real—that
she was a witch—that she could use her magic for good—that all magic was good.
That the world fell in planes of black and white, and she could still make
clear-cut choices between good and bad. It stuck in her throat, and she fell
silent.
“Perhaps,
Miss Granger,” the Headmaster said, sighing. For the first time since she had
known him, Hermione realized that he was old. Really realized, not just
recognized it in some distant corner of her mind. He had lived for almost two
centuries now. Even for wizards, his lifespan had been unusually long. It would
not be long now, her mind told her, and instead of infallible and all-knowing,
he merely looked like a man, old beyond even his advanced span of years, who
had had to grow up too fast and see more than any human should, and who could
only do the best he could.
“Hermione,”
he said gently, using her name for the first time. “I understand. I really do.
But sometimes, promises get broken. You see that, don’t you? And some people
must be sacrificed for the greater good, because that’s the way life is. The
Light doesn’t have time to smooth things out for every single person along its
path, or the Dark would win. The Light is a cause, and a cause hurts those it
serves sometimes. And sometimes, we must weigh one person against another and
it is our feeble hearts that chooses who.”
“Who are we
to judge?” murmured Hermione, fragments of something she had read so long ago,
rising up to fit the silence needed to be filled.
“And in the
end,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear it, “all we can do is choose
the one we love.”
And Hermione
knew what she had to do.
