Chapter 16
It was mortifying to watch Ajax rub at his red-rimmed eyes and insist that no, he hadn’t just been crying, and that stain on his shirt sleeve wasn’t snot disgustingly rubbed from his nose. Of all the people Weasley could have bummed me off to, did it have to be this walking disaster? Oh how I hated having to share this space with someone so vile, and how I hated that Ajax insisted on pretending nothing was wrong.
Watching in real time as Ajax’s crumbled expression smoothed out into a lopsided smile was not what I wanted to be doing. It was discomforting. It made me think of how I’d never seen him down before. It reminded me of churlish, pig-nosed Pansy, who was a well of anxiety hidden away behind her unbreakable, hard edged facade.
Fucking fuck. He was hiding in our room at a time of day when he’d been certain I wouldn’t be here because I was meant to be chasing after Potter. This despondency had to be something he was hiding from everyone. Which meant no one knew he needed help.
I was not the person the DMLE sent to help people. Maybe Healer Green could come out and be good for more than hexes. I glanced at the snot booger peeking out of Ajax’s nose, because he had just been crying, and decided not to leave this in Healer Green’s untrustworthy hands.
What was it Potter said to people? I’d transcribed enough of his conversations surely I could manage it. The challenge was I could memorize the words but I never had the right tone. It was exactly like how I could diagram the precise angle and force needed to accomplish the Wronski Feint, right before crashing into the ground while Potter absconds with the snitch. Every O on every essay made Potter’s innate abilities that much more infuriating. I was writing Potter’s instruction manuals for him. I said all Potter’s words. Why the fuck wouldn’t Ajax talk to me?
I should be taking notes on my attempt for posterity. That way the DMLE would have the perfect what-not-to-do example in their leadership trainings. There was nothing to do about it. I couldn’t make my stormy gaze mirror Potter’s heartfelt one. I couldn’t match Potter’s endless calm. I could, however, pepper Ajax with accusations in a way none of my data had yet to monitor.
Did your grandma die? Did your broom break? Did Trix break up with you? Did you drop one of those ridiculous weights on your toe like I always say you will? Did you get a sad letter? Did you get a papercut? Did a third year trainee take the last pudding in the canteen out from under you? Did someone spoil the end of that book you were reading? Did you burn a hole in those trousers that show off your ass? Did a dark lord move into your childhood home and destroy the world as we know it? Did a hippogriff bite your arm? Did Weasley say something mean? Did I say something mean? Were you forced to buy one of those muggle pinging boxes and you can’t figure out how to turn it off? Were you mugged outside that auror pub and you’re too embarrassed to tell anyone about it? Did those weeks of studying for exams not do the trick and now you’ve failed and they’re going to kick you out?
Aha! Nailed it.
Wait.
What sort of hufflepuff shit was this. Ajax had studied. I’d seen him study. He always was off with Trix studying, and I knew that’s what they were doing because Bettie in Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was actually dating Trix and she’d carve Ajax’s balls off if he went there.
Ajax broke down and showed me his marks. They were… look, I suddenly questioned how he got through first year.
Practical classes, Ajax lamented as I read through his answers. These didn’t make sense. Not because his writing was literally incoherent, which it was. Rather because, while I always found him stupid, he knew this stuff. I scoffed and ran my mouth about him missing the question on how to identify crushed unicorn horn. We’d dealt with crushed unicorn horn as part of the potion smuggling case, dumbass. Calling someone a dumbass was not one of the tests Weasley or Potter were running. Maybe it should have been, because Ajax huffed before rambling at me about how it had actually been graphorn, with a thorough breakdown of all the ways the smugglers had masked it so the aurors would chase their tails over false leads.
Shit on toast, he did know it. How the fuck had he bombed the test this bad?
It was also not one of Weasley or Potter’s experiments to ask that over and over again, in different forms, when the trainee couldn’t explain. I read aloud Ajax every question, and while he never answered in an essay style, he was able to talk through an example close enough to what had been asked that it was clear he had answers. For a moment I was hopeful, because he had a make-up test in three days to give him a final shot to stay in the program and he’d already done the hard part of learning everything.
Ajax gave me his lopsided smile and agreed he’d be fine. Unfathonably, it made me want to smack him.
You absolute muppet, I complained as I dragged Ajax from the room. I gripped his shirtsleeve and twisted tight enough to make it sting and get my point across. I single mindedly marched him up to the trainer offices without a plan on what I’d do from there. The plan was made for me when Potter stepped out of office just as we reached the corridor. He looked at me. Then at my hand gripping Ajax. And then at Ajax’s face. I turned and looked at Ajax, too. That damned smile was still plastered on a stress-pale expression. Grinning through his fear that someone else would find out how he had failed.
Malfoy, is there something I can help you with?
Shove off, Potter. Ajax and I are busy.
I took him into Weasley’s office to hide. Potter would know Weasley was home with his family. The two of us were here all alone with no clue how to start.
I’d spent the night shuffling through Weasley’s notes and all the books he’d assembled for his studies. In my distraction I managed to ask Ajax about what happened without overthinking it. I wish I had recorded the tone so I could memorialize actually having done it right. Even if the outcome couldn’t possibly be right. Only I was allowed to call Ajax stupid. I’d tear into anyone else who tried, even himself.
Weasley had this way of not helping you solve a problem. He taunted me with guiding questions like I was one of his damned trainees he wanted to see figure out answers for themselves. He was using tricks I’d read his report on, and I could murder him for it. I wasn’t a fucking class project, I just wanted to help Ajax pass his test.
Weasley let me yammer on about potions that might be beneficial to calming anxiety or improving focus for a while before inquiring about how I know Ajax was failing due to anxiety or lack of focus.
Once, me glowering would have gotten a rise out of Weasley. I wish those days weren’t filled with murder so I’d be allowed to miss them.
Once, I’d worked this hard to help Vincent score an Acceptable on his N.E.W.T.s. Then all his efforts burned up in the FiendFyre. I got stuck on that thought. Classic Malfoy, not doing enough to save anyone.
Weasley was pleased as punch the morning of Ajax’s exam when I slammed a complete report on his desk. So what if Potter was better at spell casting. So what if I wasn’t fucking comforting to the downtrodden. I hadn’t slept in two days to finish this research and I cited all my sources.
He wasn’t stupid. It was a writing disability. Muggles screened for it and made accommodations. Wizards tried potions and charms and got their kids sent to Janet Thickey for life, like trying to cure a squib. Ajax was brilliant to have gotten this far without an accepting Magic community. You didn’t need to cure a squib, and you didn’t need to cure Ajax.
It’s a good thing they never gave me back my wand else I would have hexed Weasley’s grin right off his face.
Afterwards, when Ajax passed an oral exam and was no longer facing expulsion, it was a good thing they never gave me back my wand else I would have petrified Ajax before he could touch me. It had been so long since I’d been touched. I wanted a protego between me and his arms. The last person to have hugged me was my mother. I’d been too damaged to melt into her arms like I should have. Too aware of all the eyes in the courtroom watching us, eager for mother to be dragged off to her gruesome fate.
I felt eyes watching me now. Once again observing my most vulnerable moment. I pulled my head off Ajax’s shoulder where I’d been leaning. Looked up at narrowed, green eyes that stared at me like they could see into my soul.