Chapter Four: Carry the Lad That's Born to Be King
Ron was waiting, arms crossed, in the corridor. "Why didn't you tell me, Ginny?" his cheeks flushed red as the volume of his voice increased. "You could have told me about what you were really doing with Charlie. You could have sent an owl, hell, you could have sent a bloody dragon! You could have flown a bloody dragon! Do I always have to be the last to know things?"
"Why didn't you tell me how you felt about Hermione?" countered Ginny, effectively stopping Ron's ranting. He opened his mouth to deny or confirm, she wasn't sure, but she wouldn't hear it. "You could have told me. You know that I, of all people, would understand what it's like. But I had to guess. When would I have told you anything? I got home four days ago, just after Harry and Hermione came. You ignored me, shutting yourselves away in your room like you always have. Then we were in Diagon Alley, and then here. When, Ron?"
"But, Mum, and Dad, or the twins... you didn't tell anybody."
"No one listens," muttered Ginny, feeling her anger start to dissolve. She was tired of fighting.
Ron wasn't. "You heard what Dumbledore said about trusting one another. You're my sister, you should trust me. I-I- I came for you in the Chamber of Secrets, I saved your life."
"Harry came for me, Ron. I owe Harry a life. You didn't even notice that there was anything wrong for months, and you've known me all my life." The words came from a burning, acid place in her chest, an old hurt.
"The roof collapsed!" Ron exploded, slamming his fist against a painting of three rotund dairymaids, who ducked out of the way.
"I know," Ginny whispered morosely as she backed away from him. "It doesn't matter anymore, really. What matters is not that you think I don't trust you. It's that you don't trust me."
***
"Damn her! Damn that bloody Weasley!" Draco exclaimed, glad Flitwick and McGonagall were gone.
"Had you that power, Mr. Malfoy, you might want to reconsider in light of the fact that she recently saved your life and caught your illness in the process." Snape pulled up chairs for Draco and himself. "Please explain, however, what Virginia Weasley has to do with my question about your mother's well-being."
"What did she tell you?" demanded Draco, ignoring the chair.
Snape raised his eyebrows, prompting Dumbledore to break in. "I think she informed Madam Pomfrey that you were ill. Otherwise, that you were acting strangely on the train, and that she and some house-elves brought you up after finding you unconscious."
Draco dropped heavily into the offered seat, scowling darkly at Dumbledore. "Why should I trust you?" .
"I trust you," Dumbledore said, surprising him. "And since I want you to trust me, I suppose it only fair to tell you that it was only a supposition, given the recent rumors about many members of our Slytherin families and your advanced state of Dementor's Disease when you came in last night."
"She's dead." Draco closed his eyes. "I saw it happen."
***
In Gryffindor tower, Ginny was clutching the twins' hair as they took her for an involuntary 'victory lap' around the common room on their shoulders. She ducked a swarm of Filibuster Fireworks and finally managed to slide down to the floor when Colin blinded Fred and George with his flash. "Ginny, come here and pose next to Harry, that's it," Colin shouted over the din of the crowd, pushing them together.
Harry slung his arms around her shoulders in a friendly manner, and she slipped an arm around his waist as she was jostled by people patting her on the back. "Oh, I hate this," she complained to herself. Now I know why Harry is always ducking reporters... although I could stand here like this for a while, I suppose...
Harry laughed, overhearing. He grinned down at her cheekily. "Well, with Colin sometimes it's better just to go along." Ginny snorted; Harry never went along with Colin's requests for photos. "You'd better get used to it anyway if you're going to be famous. Now, smile, you've earned it." He turned her toward the camera and she pasted on her best smile.
"Say cheese! That's it, Ginny." Colin clicked away frantically, ecstatic. Over his shoulder, Ginny saw the portrait hole open. Ron froze, one leg over the frame, his eyes fixed on Ginny in Harry's arms. His face contorted in a paroxysm of betrayal, then was lost from her vision as he grabbed the sides of the opening and hauled himself through. He vanished as the crowd shifted around her, and she only glimpsed his bright hair again as he disappeared up the stairway to the dormitories.
"Here, come have some Butterbeer," Harry said, pulling her toward the fire.
***
He was supposed to be sleeping.
Instead, he was sitting atop the covers of his bed, plotting. A long roll of parchment spilled from his lap into a serpentine curl on the floor. At the top was the title "Things To Do To Annoy Gryffindors This Year, Particularly Harry Potter." Underneath was a graceful line, the slender slash used to begin lists. A number one. And nothing else.
He'd been sitting in the same position for nearly an hour, and naught had come to mind. Nothing new, anyway -- Draco wanted a list of curses, hexes, and jinxes that he hadn't cast on the blithering idiots before. He wanted to keep them guessing. But the unused remainder of his repertoire of skills, courtesy of his father, would probably get him expelled. That might not be a bad thing, since a tear-stained and practically incoherent letter from Pansy just this morning indicated that she and a number of other Slytherin students were being transferred to Durmstrang by their parents.
Draco stood and stretched, pulling a heavy black velvet bathrobe over his monogrammed grey pajamas. He didn't know any more curses to add to his list, but he knew where to find them. He rapidly unbuckled his broom from where it was strapped to his school trunk in preparation for tomorrow's return to Hogwarts.
Opening the bedroom door slowly, he confirmed that the hall lamps had been extinguished by the house-elves. This generally signaled that the household was abed. Draco mounted his broom and hovered over the Sleepwalking Wards that had been imbedded in the hallway floor when he was four and had tumbled down the stairs to the dungeon in the middle of the night. He had cut open his forehead, but it had healed without a scar.
Some nights, he would float down until his toes nearly touched the floor. If he sounded the alarm and hid his broom, would his father believe that he was sleepwalking? Other times, he covered his bare feet with his dragonhide boots, the most expensive pair that a small Italian wizarding cobbler could conjure, and roamed the empty wings until dawn out of a desire to know if anyone came to check on him in the night, if anyone would notice he was missing.
Once, his mother would have come. But they hadn't spoken since he started at Hogwarts. Certainly, they conversed about supplies and marks and robes and upholding the Malfoy name, but never like they had before that last summer when he turned eleven.
Tonight he turned his broom toward the center of the Malfoy mansion, resisting the urge to fly blindly at top speed through the dark halls, judging distances by memory. One of these nights he would actually crash and break something, and he hadn't thought up a good enough explanation yet.
Draco floated through the half-open doors to the library. He didn't bother to light a lamp; instead, he allowed his eyes to adjust to the illumination of the roaring cold-fire that was lit in the grate at all hours and in all seasons. Giving only a perfunctory glance at the shelves on the first level he glided up above the tops of the magical ladders that could be rolled from shelf to shelf (enchanted, so that only his father could raise them to reach the next three stories).
Head canted, he ran a hand over the spines of the books on a shelf he hadn't yet explored during his occasional nighttime forays. Potent Potables didn't seem particularly promising. Potions were difficult to translate into pranks -- too obvious. Odds and Ends. Before and After. Ends in "Z." No, no, and no.
Finally picking out a thin, squarish book entitled He Hexed Me and Left Me: A Daily Prophet Special Collection of Letters to Dear Eleanor and a pocket-sized tome called simply Bloody Useful Curses, he turned his broomstick back toward the doors.
Someone was there.
***
Hermione, next to her on the sofa, was on her sixth bottle of Butterbeer. "You know I'll help you catch up in any way I can, Ginny. Fourth year was so much more intense, but if Professor Dumbledore thinks you can do it, I think you can do it." She squeezed her hand.
"Thanks," replied Ginny, knowing that she meant it. Hermione, as a friend, was too scrupulous to offer herself as a tutor because she was suddenly (and hopefully, briefly) famous. Ginny knew Hermione would always put Ron and Harry first, but her support was welcome all the same.
"Too bad you had to get stuck with Draco Malfoy. You and Seamus should ask to be partners; I'm sure he wants to get rid of Zabini. Don't know what they're thinking, letting Slytherins in our class..." Hermione yawned and leaned her head back, closing her eyes.
Harry reached across Ginny's lap, plucking the half-empty bottle from Hermione's slack hand before it could fall to the carpet. "Sticky, and a mess to clean up," he noted, before finishing it off himself.
Neville sat up from his prone position next to Ginny's feet. "When are Fred and George getting back with those sandwiches? We should've gone down to dinner with everyone else." The twins had insisted that the Integrated Magic students from Gryffindor have a private buffet in the common room while the other students dined in the Great Hall (tactical strategy, claimed Fred, on the basis that it made them look like a bunch of duffers too embarrassed to show up, and in case they needed to claim Ginny's Society membership was a hoax later). Only a few had been convinced to remain, probably due to the danger of eating anything that had been within Fred or George's reach.
"But then, you would have missed Fred's Everything Sandwich," George said, appearing with a large platter. "At least, if you define Everything as ham on rye. Not too creative with the menus, our Fred."
"I have a feeling you will find one of your personal hygiene products filled with undiluted Bubotuber Pus in the near future," Fred chuckled as he carried in a picnic basket filled with fruit and pastries.
"Is that a threat or a prediction?"
***
Draco felt his head snap backward as he wrenched his broom perpendicular to the floor and shot upward, teetering wildly as he slammed to a halt again in a shadow near the ceiling. He held a sleeve of his robe over his nose and mouth to muffle his rasping breath. With a feeling of dread, he shifted slowly to look down at the scene below.
Narcissa Malfoy paused just inside the intricately carved doors with one hand resting on a bejeweled knob. Had she seen him? She must have, she was looking up... no, she was wearing the distant, unfocused expression that Draco associated with school -- how she looked after he left, how she always looked when his father was around.
A second later, Lucius was there too. Clutching his left arm across his stomach, he used his right hand to grab a fistful of Narcissa's nightgown and thrust her toward the fireplace. "Hurry," he growled, kneeling beside her where she fell.
From above, the two figures could have been angels praying, the firelight making halos around their golden hair. A humming sound came from the fire, growing louder with each second. Sounding strained, Lucius spoke again. "Answer."
Then, "My Lord Voldemort."
***
Hermione swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. "No, they said vessel, not vassal. A vessel is a boat, or ship, not a servant. It could be a container, I suppose. Mars is a planet, a god, the bringer of war. The warship isn't wanted, maybe? A weapon? What else did they say again?"
"Something about the Eastern star breaking somebody's heart before the solstice," Harry said stiffly from his seat on the couch behind Ginny. She turned her toasting fork over, watching cheese bubble up around the edges of the sandwich she held over the flames. It was done, but she didn't want to turn around and see Harry's expression, didn't want to know if he still got that same look on his face whenever Cho was mentioned.
"Well, that must be Cho," Neville said. "Even I can figure that. Next solstice is in December, so we'll know whose heart is getting broken by then."
Hermione changed the subject quickly. "Then there's the last one. That's the one that bothers me the most. 'The red haired one will betray the snake's tongue.'"
"That's Trelawney-speak if I ever heard it," George snorted. "After all, between us, the Bones girl, and Zabini almost half the class could be in on that one. But the snake's tongue, that's probably Harry again. It doesn't look good, mate."
"I think I like it better when people just predict an excruciatingly horrible death for me." Harry polished off his sandwich. "Where's Ron?"
***
"Master." Lucius Malfoy bowed his forehead to the floor. From above, Draco thought he looked like a snail, curled up on the marble slab before the grate. "I have been waiting for your visit. I knew you would wish to verify my loyalty personally."
A steely voice came from the fireplace. "As you can see, I have been gathering my resources. Everything in its time; you are not my only concern. Now it is your time to come to my aid and compensate for the long years when you denied me, forgot me. You owe me tribute."
"I have written for Draco's transfer to Durmstrang so that he may enter your service. I did not forget you, my lord, but instructed him myself in your absence. I have been faithful to you, waiting for the day when you would return to us, but denying those that would lock us away where we would be of no help..."
"And yet, the weakest and most foolish of all my servants gives his flesh, rather than my old school things, to resurrect me. Perhaps I should reconsider my assessment of my former generals."
"My lord." Lucius was nearly whimpering now, rocking back and forth with his arms tucked under his body as if he were in pain. "Do not strike me from your side. I have been lost without you. I will bring you the head of Harry Potter on a silver platter --"
"Quiet. Leave him, the alignment is not right and I do not wish the expense of feeding and clothing him and turning away would-be rescuers until that time. Send Draco to Hogwarts to keep him under surveillance. You son can be of use there. However, that is not the tribute I wish. You will already have heard that each family must give one back. Destroy your trophy, and you may rejoin me as my servant."
Lucius raised his head, hesitating. "She was the first thing you gave me."
"Pray that she is the last thing I take away."
Sitting back on his heels, Lucius drew his wand from within his robes and stretched it toward Narcissa. She hadn't changed her expression or moved from her position on the floor where Lucius had dropped her, one leg tangled in her robe and the other stretched out to the side. A second passed before he mumbled a string of words and a fiery ball of violet light gathered in the air between them.
A sound like crystal bells ringing filled the library as Narcissa Malfoy shattered into a million tiny particles of dust.
***
Ginny leaned her head against the door at the top of the tower. Two voices, muffled by the wood and stone, were raised in heated tones. She thought she recognized her name, and Hermione's. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she straightened up and walked down, feigning nonchalance and thankful for the dim lighting.
"Ah, Ginny," Seamus hailed her. "We're stuck with them, bugger all. I've been to see McGonagall and she's having none of it."
"Huh," she said thickly, not following him.
"I'll survive, never seen Zabini go after anyone much lately, but you, you won't live out the year. May my prediction be as accurate as Trelawney's. Although, you really surprised us all with that dragon business. Coming to Quidditch tryouts on Saturday? One big happy Weasley Quidditch team?"
"Um, I think I'll be too busy, and besides, I won't be lasting the year. Too hard to find replacement players," she joked uneasily, ducking around him and walking down a few steps. Actually, she only really liked Quidditch when she could play Seeker, and that wasn't likely anytime soon. She wasn't any good at it. "Too many Bludgers giving an unfair advantage to Trelawney."
"Well, g'night Ginny," he laughed as he lifted the latch to enter his room. It was jerked out of his hand as Harry opened it from the inside. Harry's injured expression turned to one of surprise as he saw Ginny and Seamus on the steps. He stepped out the door and latched it behind his back with one hand, clapping Seamus on the shoulder with the other.
"Better give Ron a bit of time," Harry managed, steering Seamus back down the spiral stairs.
***
The buzzing in Draco's ears rose and drowned out the delicate chiming sound that still echoed through the library. He slumped forward, cheek resting on his broom, seeing but not hearing his father finish at the fireplace and walk toward the tall double doors. A graceful, fluttering movement caught his eye, and he sluggishly shifted sideways to watch Bloody Useful Curses spiral toward the floor.
If this was Quidditch, he would swoop down to catch it and hold it over his head, glorying in victory. But the games were over now. Nothing left to play for, the cup was lost. He let it fall.
It hit the floor at the same moment Lucius slammed the library doors behind him.
In the morning, when Draco was sitting alone in the center of the long, polished table in the dining room not eating his breakfast, Lucius looked up from his paper long enough to say that Narcissa wouldn't be accompanying them to the train station because she was shopping for new dress robes.
***
"I won't tell him anything. I'm done with him, I hate him." His voice shook, the closest he had come to crying during the whole horrible confession.
Dumbledore passed Draco a bit of chocolate that he found in the desk drawer. He and Snape had been silent through every word and every pause while Draco recounted the barest details in starts and stops.
Draco took it, but didn't eat it. "Well, aren't you going to call the Ministry?" he demanded, staring at Dumbledore defiantly.
"You don't want me to." A statement, not a question.
"No. Then he'll know that I know, and it will be all over the papers. Or not, depending on where their loyalties lie. If he had wanted that, he could have used something traceable, like Av-- an Unforgivable Curse." Draco paused. "If I fight him, I'll lose. When I fight for him, I lose. I'm tired of losing."
***
It was very late and Draco was flying. The wind blew his hair around, over and out of his face and hiding and revealing the moon from his view. He closed his eyes; the wind made them tear up. Faster.
He flew over the deserted Quidditch stands, barely able to make out their shape in the darkness. The clouds parted, and he was startled to see a rider not ten feet away and heading in the opposite direction. He squinted and saw a stream of bright hair snapping like a pennant as she passed by. Ginny Weasley.
She turned her head at the last second, seeing him, and spun sideways to a stop.
"There's a charm," she called over the wind. "Set to recognize broomsticks going over the forest. Sounds an alarm." Ginny began to reorient herself back toward the castle.
"Weasley."
Ginny stopped and looked back at Draco. He slowly nodded his head, once. A rare gesture of thanks. She inclined her head in reply.
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Draco and Ginny belong to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Warner Bros and various other corporations. They are being used here without permission and/or affiliation with the above. None of the authors listed here make any profit from these stories.