Chapter 6
Harry watched Draco’s figure skulk around the courtyard from the library window. Hermione’s voice pulled him out of his reverie.
“Right, Harry?” She said. He hadn’t been listening.
“Sorry, what?” Harry responded. Hermione swatted at his head with a roll of parchment. “Ow! What was that for?”
“You’ve been distracted all day! These essays aren’t going to write themselves, you know.” Harry looked down at his sheet of parchment, which was confoundingly blank.
“He hardly needs to write the essays Hermione,” Ron interjected, pouting. “Professor Slughorn will give him special treatment anyway.”
“That’s not–” Harry started protesting when he noticed movement in his periphery. Draco was getting up from his spot in the courtyard. He gathered his textbooks, dusted the dirt off of his robes, and disappeared around the column.
“See!” Hermione insisted, following Harry’s gaze. “This is what I’m talking about. You keep disappearing at odd times, you’re actually coming to Potions early–”.
“Didn’t you say I should stop sleeping in so late? That I was missing valuable instruction time?” Harry responded. Hermione’s face screwed up. He bounced his knee under the table, feeling agitated.
“Honestly Harry, I’ve been saying that since first year and you never listened!”
“Maybe I had a change of heart.” Harry pouted, feeling antsy at the loss of Malfoy in his field of view. Not in a creepy, stalker way of course. He was trying to help Malfoy. It was easier to help him when he could actually see him.
“Literally.” Ron said, not taking his eyes off his parchment. Harry kicked him in the shin. “Ow!” Hermione observed the exchange carefully, gears turning in her brain. She worried her lips with her teeth.
“Is this about Malfoy?” She prodded. Harry pressed his lips into a firm line. “It is! I knew it!”
“Half the school bloody knows it.” Ron mumbled.
“Ron!” Hermione scolds.
“What?” He scoffed. “I’m sorry mate, but you haven’t been exactly subtle. I had to find out from Ginny that she saw you two sneaking off into the Room of Requirement!” Harry felt a headache coming on. He rubbed his temples.
“What?!” Hermione’s eyebrows shot into her hairline–if there was one thing she hated, it was being left out of the loop.
“We weren’t sneaking off Ron!” Harry shouted. “Malfoy had just been attacked! I was trying to help!”
“Serves him right!” Ron spat.
“RON!” Hermione exclaimed.
Harry stood up abruptly, chair scraping on the wood floor. Magic seeped from his pores, emanating in harsh, angry waves. He turned away from Hermione and Ron and stormed out of the library. What did Ron know about it? He hadn’t seen what Harry had seen. He hadn’t seen Malfoy, doubled over in pain, trembling on the floor! He hadn’t seen him wracked with tears, sobbing as if he didn’t have any hope in the world! He hadn’t seen the way that, even asleep, Malfoy’s eyebrows were knit together with tension. He couldn’t even begin to understand.
What right did anyone have to live out their own sick revenge fantasies on Malfoy? Hadn’t Harry lost as much as any of them? His parents were killed by the man, no, the creature, that Malfoy had pledged his allegiance to! If he could find it in his heart to understand, why couldn’t they? And what would they have done? Did the two Gryffindors who kicked him down think that they would’ve made better choices? Do they think that if it had been their parents' lives hanging in the balance, their own lives hanging in the balance, that they still would’ve done “the right thing”?
People praise Harry for following the path that was predetermined for him, and they disparage Draco for doing the same. Don’t they understand that they were two sides of the same coin? Forced to finish a war that they didn’t start?
It is our choices that show what we truly are.
Dumbledore’s words echoed through his head as he stalked through the hallways, restless. And hadn’t Malfoy chosen to lie to protect Harry that day in the Manor? Hadn’t he chosen to come back to Hogwarts, despite it all? Rain pounded against the window panes, angry and insistent. His pent up energy needed an outlet. Rain be damned. He was going for a fly.
Over the course of his educational career, Harry had been called many things. Stubborn. Impulsive. Reckless. Of course, time and time again he proved that his intuition saved lives, and slowly but surely people started to heed his words. To the point where others hung onto his words, as if he was an infallible deity brought to save Wizarding Kind. Well, they weren’t entirely wrong. But Harry wasn’t entirely right either, and his brash sensibilities and unchecked hubris had him flying too close to the sun–or rather, too close to the eye of the storm.
What started as a drizzling rain had transformed into a raging thunderstorm, cold and biting. Harry was soaked to the bone, his robes, heavy with water, clung to his skin. In the cover of the night, he could hardly see anything, coupled with the fact that his glasses were covered in rain droplets, obscuring the little visibility he had. A gust of wind blew them into the darkness.
Oh no, he thought. Malfoy just fixed those.
He clung onto his broom for dear life, trying to navigate back to the castle. The winds blew fiercely in his face, whistling past his ears. Oh, he was really in it now. His grip on his broom began to slip. In the distance, a lightning bolt scorched the earth. Thunder shook the heavens. He turned his body around, looking for the source of the noise. In a brief moment, he recognized his mistake. And then he went tumbling down towards the ground.
In the distance, he heard someone scream his name.