Draco Steals a Letter
"I know what you're about to say, professor," Harry said quickly, "but please hear me out first?"
Professor McGonagall sat down with a heavy sigh, robes swirling around the arms of her chair. She rubbed her forehead and looked at him over her spectacles. "Mr Potter. I understand what I signed up for as your temporary guardian but really, the first day of term?"
"Yes… I mean, sorry, professor."
He put on his most contrite expression. Outside the closed door of the office, the excited sounds of a thousand students at the feast made their way up the stairs. McGonagall poured herself a glass of something amber and waved her other hand at him.
"Very well, go ahead and tell me your story."
"Thank you, professor." Harry took a deep breath as he got his thoughts in order. "OK. It started when I was staying with Blaise - you put me there for the last two weeks, remember?"
He cast his mind back. McGonagall had taken over as Harry's guardian after the chaotic end of the last school year. In the administrative and moral mess of Albus Dumbledore - most respected and rewarded wizard in memory - being revealed a traitor to Hogwarts' safety and carted off to jail, it had been uncovered that he had been responsible for Harry staying at the Dursleys for the past decade. Harry was understandably livid. He already hated the old man but it had just gotten even more personal. For lack of a better solution (and thanks to Harry's stubborn refusal to return to Privet Drive), McGonagall had taken over as guardian.
But he hadn't stayed with her in the summer (where did McG live anyway? Who knew? Teachers slept in the staff room and functioned purely on coffee and spite, according to the older students.) Instead, Harry had spent the summer being shipped between his friends' houses every few weeks. For safety reasons. Harry had spent a Quidditch-filled week with Daphne, a delightfully Muggleborn fortnight with Tracey, and an… interesting few days with Crabbe's family before the Zabinis returned from Northern Africa. Despite the chaos of constant moving and introductions to new sets of gawking family members, Harry was the happiest he had ever been in living summer memory. Maybe summer with his birth parents had been happy. He'd never know.
"So, I was at the Zabinis'…" Harry began.
*****
"Check."
"Already?"
"Face it, Potter, you can't stand up to the grandmaster."
On the chess board, Harry's queen shook her fist at him and aimed a kick at the opposing king. Harry, sprawled on his stomach on an expensive plush carpet in a ray of late summer sunshine, rolled his eyes behind his round glasses.
"Grandmaster," he scoffed. He idly flicked a knight about the board. Triumphantly, Blaise set his king even nearer.
"Checkmate!"
"OK, OK…"
"Woohoo! Baby! Three for three!"
Blaise got up a victory-danced around the parlour. It was an enormous parlour, so it took him quite some time. At the door, Blaise's mother, a tall and glamorous witch, put her head in. She tutted in amusement and left.
"You've made your point," Harry said but without resentment. Honestly, he was just glad that he wasn't getting punched for losing. His cousin would have attacked if Harry had won, lost, drawn or even dared to ask for a game in the first place. Harry rolled onto his back like a cat. Even though Blaise's mother was rather self-obsessed and his sisters distant, the Zabini mansion was an infinitely safer place to live for the summer than any he could ever remember.
Blaise landed on the floor next to Harry and startled him from his descending thoughts.
"Good game?"
"Good game," Harry confirmed.
"What shall we do now?"
Harry squinted, the sun streaming directly into his glasses. On his back on the plush carpet, all warm and quiet, he felt like a nap.
"Um… nothing?"
"Don't be so boring." Blaise got up and started hunting in the games cupboard (a very rich-person thing) for more entertainment. Harry's eye cast around the room and landed on a folded newspaper on the small table. He got up slowly and approached it, reaching out a hand.
"Is that today's paper-"
Blaise's hand shot out and grabbed the paper. He snatched it away, obscuring the headline. Harry stared.
"Sorry," his friend mumbled. "I… it's not September yet."
"What? It's in two days, Zabini, come on."
"McG said no," Blaise insisted. "I don't want to get detention on my first day back because I let you off by two days."
"What's the worst that could happen in two days?" pleaded Harry. "It's better for me to know, I keep saying that."
"It's not like I disagree with you." Blaise looked uncomfortable. "I just…"
Harry sighed. "No, I understand." Still, his fingers itched with the desire to grab the paper back and read it cover to cover. He'd had no news of whatever had been going on with Dumbledore's trial and the Voldemort situation. McGonagall had forbidden him from knowing until they could speak about it together - and she was understandably up to her ears in work at the moment.
"Sorry Harry," Blaise repeated. He set the newspaper back down.
"It's fine, really-"
CRACK.
Harry ducked, hands over his head. "What was that?"
A cloud of smoke spooled in the sunny centre of the room. As it faded into nothing, two figures holding hands, one taller and one much shorter, became clear. Harry's jaw dropped.
"Draco!"
Harry couldn’t understand it. One minute, there was no one and the next, Draco Malfoy was inexplicably standing in the Zabinis' parlour. "Is that Harry?" he asked urgently.
"Of course! It's me…" Harry's voice faltered. As he approached his friend, he saw that Draco looked the same as he had when they said goodbye in June, still dressed in Slytherin green, except for one thing. He now wore a hunter green velvet cloth over his eyes. And his head only turned to Harry's at the sound of his voice. "Oh, Draco," Harry said softly. "Did it go completely?"
Draco nodded stiffly. "Stop that, Harry," he snapped. "I know what look you have on your face.”
"Um, hello?" Blaise said behind them. "Hi, not sure if we've met. I'm Blaise Zabini, and it's my parlour you're standing in?"
"Oh good, Blaise is there too." Draco's tone switched to businesslike and brusque.
"Yeah, it's my house."
"Good." Draco took a step forward confidently. Harry noticed that he hadn't dropped the hand of the smaller figure who'd arrived with him, who Harry could now see was a cowering house elf. "I came as soon as I could get away from my father. I need…one of you to come back home with-”
"Sorry," Harry interrupted. "Did you teleport here?"
Both pureblood Slytherins sighed identical aristocrat-wizard sighs.
"Of course he doesn't know about Apparation," Draco muttered.
"You mean no one told him yet," Blaise countered. "He wouldn't have seen it because you can't do it within Hogwarts." He turned to Harry. "I'll explain later."
"Technically it's a house elf Side-Along," Draco continued,"which was the only way I could get away from my father. He doesn't want me talking to anyone else right now-"
"Why not?"
"Don't interrupt, Potter! I'm about to tell you!"
"Sorry. When you say he doesn't want you talking to anyone, is that why you didn't answer my owls?"
"Is something wrong?" Blaise chipped in.
"Shut up, you two!" Draco sighed, pinching his forehead with his free hand. "I don't have long before he finds out I'm gone. I came to find you because… well I didn't have anyone else to go to and I… to be completely honest I… really should have rehearsed this, I…"
"What on earth is wrong with you?" Blaise asked.
"Take your time," said Harry at the same time.
Draco took a deep breath. "I… I need your help."
"...OK?"
"It's about my father - actually, it's more about me - the truth is, I'm not going back to Hogwarts.'
The parlour fell silent in the way an expensive piano falls from a great height. Then,
"What?!" said Harry and Blaise at the same time.
"You can't mean that."
"I'm afraid I do," said Draco.
"It's pretty cruel to come all this way for a prank like that," Harry said hopefully.
"It's not a prank. I swear, I'd love it to be a prank."
"But why?" Blaise asked. He took a seat grandly in an armchair. "I mean, it doesn't make any sense. You only flunked two exams in June, surely they're not expelling you for that."
"Very funny, Zabini. I'm not expelled, I've been forbidden by my father." He shifted his feet and the house elf crept a little closer to him.
"But why?" asked Harry.
"Do you want me to spell it out to you? Can't you put it together yourself?" Draco snapped.
"No?"
"Fine. Father doesn't want me to go to school because he hasn't told anyone about my condition and he's, he's concerned about what it'll do for the family image."
"Well, damn," said Blaise from the armchair. "So what's the plan?"
"I need one of you to come home with me, right now," said Draco. "Dobby says Father's writing a letter to McGonagall but he hasn't finished or sent it yet. I need someone to steal it and get rid of it. Right now. Before he gets back from the north."
Harry opened his mouth but Blaise got there first. "Why do you need us for it? It's in your house."
"Oh yes, brilliant, why didn't I think of that? I'll just walk into my father's office and search his desk, reading every piece of paper until I find what I'm looking for. How does that sound?"
"Like a good plan, what's wrong with that?"
Harry stared at him with incredulity.
"What?" Blaise asked. "OK, is anyone going to explain to me what's going on?You show up with no warning, Malfoy, you and your house elf. You're acting all strange with that blindfold on, and telling frankly odd stories! I don't understand what's happening."
There was an awkward silence, which Draco finally broke.
"I'm not acting strange in this blindfold, Zabini," he said in a frosty tone, like a slighted baron of Snowmanville. "I'm using it. Because I finally went fully blind this month."
Blaise's surprise was actually quite funny to see.
"His mouth has dropped open and his eyes are bugging out," Harry described. "He's mouthing words, not sure what. Maybe a prayer?"
"He's that scared of blind people?" Draco asked dryly.
"I'm not scared!" Blaise defended. "Just shocked. And a little wounded you didn't tell me you were going blind earlier. Me, your oldest friend!"
"I wouldn't say we were friends for all that time. The first time you met me, you nearly gave me a concussion with that Quaffle."
"In my defence, you should have seen that coming -" Blaise began. Then, "Ohhhhh."
"Yeah, ohhhh," Draco mocked.
"Ohhhhh," said Blaise, as if they didn't get it the first time. Harry turned back to Draco.
"So that's why you need one of us, to get you that letter," he said. "OK, let's go."
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Right, hold my other arm," Draco instructed. "Dobby, on three. One, two-"
"Bye, Blaise." Harry waved.
"Happy breaking and entering," Blaise said, still looking a little shell shocked.
"- three."
CRACK.
Harry kept his eyes tight closed as the world tipped and spun uncontrollably around him. He was still gripping Draco by the shirt cuff, which felt secure but everything else was being stirred like soup by an overenthusiastic toddler. As quickly as it had begun, the three of them landed in a tangle on a stone floor.
“Oof,” Harry groaned, rubbing his head. “What just happened?”
“Come on,” his friend muttered, helping him up. “Let’s get out of here…”
Harry, disoriented and lost, found himself leading Draco, blind but confident, down a long and dark hall. Slender pillars reached to the ribbed roof and all the alcoves were hung with thick cloth curtains to block all the light. From the echoes, Harry could tell that the hall extended for quite a while in each direction.
"Where exactly are we?" he whispered.
"Malfoy Manor," Draco said. "Welcome to my home." He sounded just a little bitter. "Dobby, go keep watch for my father. Come warn us when he's coming."
"Yes, Master Draco," the house elf squeaked. He scuttled off and was out of sight.
"Which way?" asked Harry. "I mean, left is another hallway and right has an arched door at the end-"
"I know the way around my own house, Potter, Merlin." Draco dragged Harry down the left-hand hallway.
"It's so quiet and empty," Harry breathed as they passed stone doorway after stone doorway, all firmly fastened.
"That's because there's no one here except you, me, Dobby and my mother." He stopped in front of one door. "This is it. Open the door as quietly as you can."
Inch by inch, Harry pushed the door open. It slid, hampered by the thick dark green carpet that ran wall to wall of the study.
"I bet you wish we had this carpet in the Slytherin dorms. It would fit the colour scheme at least," Harry quipped under his breath.
"I hate this carpet," Draco replied. "Can you see the desk?"
Of course Harry could see it: the desk was the single largest one he had ever seen. Elaborately carved with swirls, snakes and patterning, its bowed legs squatted before the tall-backed armchair like a fat toad bodyguarding a praying mantis. Besides that, there was no other furniture to be seen. The room was empty; the long curtains were half drawn; the walls were dark stone. A chill lay in the air, sleeping with one eye open.
"I don't know much about private studies," said Harry as he led them to the desk. "Aren't there meant to be, I don't know, bookshelves?"
"There are bookshelves."
"Um, I know you can't see anything Draco but… no there aren't."
"Oh." His eyebrows furrowed under the blindfold. "He must have shielded them before he left."
Harry examined the back wall. Now he knew, there was a slight shimmer to it, like the edge of something in the rear view.
"The bookshelves aren't the point, Potter. Find that letter. It must be here somewhere."
They turned their attention to the desk. It was covered in papers, neatly stacked in ascending size order, strewn about, folded and half-unfolding.
"So he hides his bookshelves but not his letter and paperwork? Why is that?"
"I don't know, Potter. It'll be a piece of regulation parchment with my family crest on the top."
"Didn't know you had a crest."
"All the old families do…"
Harry flipped through a stack of papers, looking for some heraldic emblem, probably covered in snakes to be honest. Some Slytherin families took that fact very seriously. "I'm not seeing anything, Draco. Does this desk have drawers maybe?"
Draco felt his way around the desk and down the wall panels with his hands. "Here."
"Locked?" Harry joined him and tried them. Locked. "Where would a key be?"
"My father might have it with him… or maybe it's on the desk."
Harry searched under all the papers again but found neither letter nor key. "If it's with him, it's over, Draco."
"I know." He scraped his hands through his hair. "OK. It could be on the bookshelf."
"What, the invisible bookshelf?"
"Everything's invisible to me, Potter!"
"Sorry…"
Carefully, Harry extended a hand towards the back wall. His fingers bumped something. He drew back immediately. There was resistance just before the wall. Feeling again, Harry's fingers found the uneven line of the top of a row of books. He followed it down to the shelf and felt up and down, but found no key. He reported all this to Draco.
"I'll look too," said Draco, stretching his hands out and moving forward.
"Wait!" Harry grabbed his hands and pivoted him to face the wall. He found the shelf and led Draco's fingers to it. "There you go."
Draco's method was a lot more chaotic than Harry's, sweeping his hands at great speed over the shelves and moving on to the next one. Several books were knocked over, and fell to the floor.
"Slow down!" Harry knelt to pick them up. Something else fell right on his head. "Ouch!" He rubbed the sore spot and looked down at it. "Got it."
"The key? Did I find it?"
"Fine, technically it was you." Harry tried it in the drawer lock. It fit, turned and the drawer opened. "More papers."
"Check them."
"That's what I'm doing… oh, it wouldn't happen to be this, would it? Dear Professor, concerning Draco Lucius Malfoy…"
"That's it."
"Your middle name is Lucius?"
"It's my father's name. Never mind that now." Draco fished in his pocket and shoved an identical piece of regulation parchment, but this one was blank. "I'm going to dictate."
"Quill?" Harry leaned the paper on the desk and dipped a quill in a wrought-glass inkpot. "Eagle feather, fancy."
"Shut up, Potter. It starts-"
CRACK.
Dobby appeared in the centre of the lush carpet, smoking a little around the edges. "Master Draco, your father is returned!" he piped.
"Never mind, don't bother writing," Draco told Harry, speaking at top speed. "Write the address on the envelope, quick, quick!"
Harry took the envelope from him and scribbled the address as Draco dictated, then stuffed the blank page in it and sealed it with green wax by Draco's instructions. "We don't have your family's crest to seal it-"
"Potter! Doesn't matter! Take this-" (it was the letter Lucius Malfoy had written) "-get rid of it. He'll owl this one.'
Footsteps could be heard echoing down the stony hallways, faintly but growing louder. Green ink dripped onto the envelope from the hastily-dropped quill.
"-and Dobby will Apparate you back."
"Will I see you on the train in two days?"
"If all goes well. Now go!"
Dobby skipped forward and took Harry's arm, poised to leave again. Draco's hands found Harry's shoulders.
"And Potter? Thank you."
Harry opened his mouth to say something, "you're welcome", maybe, "it's nothing", or "what are friends for?". But with a CRACK, both he and the house elf were gone, and Malfoy Manor vanished in a blink.
"Harry? Earth to Harry? Hello?" Blaise snapped his fingers in front of Harry's face.
Harry was on the sun-soaked carpet of the Zabinis' manor again, on his elbows. His glasses had flown off and he fixed them back on his face.
"Well? Did you complete Malfoy's mad mission, then?"
"Just in time." Harry held up the stolen parchment in triumph. To his surprise, it wasn't the only thing in his hand.
"What's the souvenir?"
Harry groaned. "Oh, it's one of Draco's father's books, it fell off the invisible shelf…" And he must have forgotten to drop it along with the key. It was a slim book with a tattered black cover. Harry held it up close to his eyes. Faintly printed on the front were the letters D-I-A-R-Y. "Oh noooo. Blaise, I've accidentally stolen Mr Malfoy's diary…"
Blaise, understandably, fell into an armchair with laughter. Trepidatious, Harry flicked through the pages at the very corner. He frowned. Then he opened the pages fully.
"What does it say? What's he confessing?" Blaise scrambled up eagerly.
"Hate to disappoint." Harry turned it around to show him. "It's completely blank, the whole book."
"Aw." His friend fell back into the chair.
Harry tucked the book into his pocket. Oh well. Hopefully it wouldn't be missed too much from the Malfoy library.