Chapter 3
Harry ended up not being able to visit Malfoy Saturday- Ron and Hermione dragged him to Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley for Christmas shopping, which wasn't for over three months. Hermione insisted that it was better to get there ahead of time, before the prices went up.
It was weird to be off school grounds, all the way to Diagon Alley, during just a school weekend, but it was technically allowed for the Eighth years.
The three of them got most of their shopping done, but still had a few things to get for the people who were slightly more illusive, or for the other two that were with them.
Harry left the castle just after sunset the next day, Sunday. He'd sat down on the dock, swinging his feet and hoping Malfoy would show- stupidly, he hadn't brought his map.
As luck would have it, however, Malfoy turned up- plopping down next to him, though Harry knew realistically it was just controlled floating so that it looked like such.
"I thought you weren't going to come back," Malfoy said, crossing his arms huffily.
"I got caught up, sorry," Harry apologized. "Though, I thought you didn't care if I stayed or left? Very well could have-"
"Shut up, Potter."
Harry snickered, looking out over the water. “Do you ever get bored?” He asked, looking over at Malfoy. “I mean, you attend classes, but what else do you do? What can ghosts do? Are you a poltergeist?”
Malfoy frowned, looking somewhat offended. Apparently, he didn’t feel the need to voice his protests, because he gave Harry a normal answer. “It does get boring at night, yes. During the day I have classes. I’ll read over shoulders in the library, but once the school shuts down… It does get rather boring, I suppose. And no, I’m not a bloody poltergeist.”
“So you can’t even interact with anything,” Harry spoke, feeling glum as he idly pushed his hand through Malfoy’s somewhat transparent shoulder and grinning when Malfoy recoiled and scowled at him.
“Stop that. It feels weird.”
“Does it? Other ghosts don’t seem to mind,” Harry noted, genuinely curious.
“Other ghosts are actually dead,” Malfoy sniffed, “and have been for hundreds of years.”
“Do you talk to them? Can you talk to them, or can they not see you either? In the castle, I mean.”
Malfoy gave a half-hearted shrug. “They’ve just glanced at me, not really spoken. Sir Nicholas has spoken to me a few times, but he didn’t seem too fond of me. He’s just polite.”
“Foreign concept to you, huh?”
“Sod off, Potter.”
Harry kicked his feet absently off the edge of the dock, sitting in silence for several moments. “So, if you’re not dead, what are you?”
Malfoy looked tense, but still more inclined to answer than the night before. “I still have a physical body, if that’s what you’re wondering. I haven’t slipped dimensions by accident- I already checked.”
“And it’s… Alive,” Harry spoke cautiously, trying not to offend Malfoy.
It didn’t matter- Malfoy whipped around with a glare and attempted to hit him. When it just drifted through Harry’s shoulder, he looked taken aback, and then a bit depressed. “Yes,” he finally grit out, “it’s alive, for now.”
“Did someone-”
“Leave it,” Malfoy demanded, and Harry finally raised his hands in surrender.
“Alright, alright. Fine. So… What did you do for fun? Before this?”
“Before I became a ghost?” Malfoy asked bitterly. Harry nodded.
He hesitated to answer, glancing warily at Harry for several moments before sighing softly. “I liked to read. Play piano. Chess.”
“What did you read?”
“Anything,” Malfoy admitted. “Even the Daily Prophet. Quibbler. Though I preferred intellectual material- Theoretical magic, curse breaking, potions theory.”
“And piano- were you good at it?”
“Decent. I could keep up.”
“And chess?”
“I haven’t lost a game in four years.”
This all sort of surprised Harry. He knew Malfoy had good marks- Hermione would gripe when he got better grades than her on assignments in the past- but he assumed Malfoy had always bought the grades. The petty schoolboy bully isn’t supposed to be smart- it goes against the stereotype. But here Malfoy was, talking about his favorite reading being complex magic topics that Harry could only dream of understanding and his pastimes being piano and chess- neither of which were particularly casual hobbies for people who weren’t brilliant.
Then again, Malfoy grew up pureblood. He was expected to do and enjoy those things, wasn’t he? It was in all the high society films Petunia would watch- the fancy champagne, showing off your children’s talents with some sort of artisan instrument and good grades and a promising future. If that came with extreme skills in the mundane at the cost of happiness, the parents never seemed to really care. Not in the films, anyway.
“I didn’t know that.”
“How would you?” Malfoy asked in return. Harry huffed out a laugh.
“Wouldn’t, I suppose.”
“What about you?” Malfoy asked, startling Harry somewhat.
“Pardon?”
“What do you do for fun?”
Harry thought for a moment. “I like to be around my friends, I guess. Whatever they’re doing I usually enjoy doing with them. I like dueling, too, and reading, believe it or not. Nothing so complex, though.”
“What do you read, then?”
Harry bobbed his head back and forth a few times, looking down at the surface of the water where he met Malfoy’s gaze through the reflection. “I like mysteries. I think it’s fun to try to come up with theories and solve them before you reach the conclusion.”
In the reflection, Malfoy had a bit of color to him, instead of being grayscale. The button-up’s uppermost button, showing above the collar of a muted chestnut-colored jumper, held a pearlescent shine. His cheeks showing a bit of a rosy tint to them. He did look alive then, with color to his face and his clothes actually showing hints of pigmentation- but the second he looked back up at Malfoy’s ghost, he was startling stark gray. Harry suddenly felt ill; like the realization of what exactly he was faced with had finally dawned on him. They’d even been talking about Malfoy’s hobbies in a past-tense.
Malfoy was dead.
Someone he’d grown up with- close or not, friends or not- he’d watch Malfoy grow up right alongside him. And now he was dead. It felt so wrong, like how Harry felt when he thought about Malfoy going to Azkaban. He was a fucking kid. He wasn’t an adult who chose to involve themselves. He wasn’t responsible.
And yet here he was.
“I didn’t realize you were so sentimental over mystery novels,” Malfoy spoke wryly, though it was clear he was uncomfortable.
Harry quickly brought his hands up to press into his eyes. No tears had escaped, but his eyes had certainly gone glossy. “I’m not; sorry.”
Malfoy went quiet, and so did Harry, forcing down the newfound mourning of someone he’d never really known to begin with.
“Potter?”
“Yeah?”
“If I do end up dying,” Malfoy spoke carefully, “would you retrieve me?”
“What do you mean?”
“My body. If I disappear, or turn into a full ghost, will you retrieve my body for me?”
Harry swallowed thickly, looking over at the blond, terrified. “No one’s found your body yet? You’re just lying somewhere?”
Malfoy gave a wry, grim smile. “Yes, I am. Will you do it? Consider it my dying wish, if you must.”
Harry swallowed. He’d seen dead people before, but not people who’d been dead for a long time. How long had Malfoy been a ghost? How long had he been dead? Where was he? In the castle? Would magic preserve his body? Or would he be rotting? Decaying?
He felt ill again.
“Why me?”
Malfoy looked down at the water, looking at Harry through the reflection. He wondered if ghosts saw in grayscale, or only just lacked the pigmentation themselves. “Pansy, Blaise and Theo couldn’t handle it. They love me. You’re the only person who isn’t attached to me that could do it that… That I’d trust with my body.”
“I suspect if I found you, I’d have to report it to officials who would do it,” Harry spoke carefully. “I’m not sure I could.”
Malfoy shook his head. “I… They wouldn’t. They’d leave me there. It’s complicated. Please, Potter. If I die, I at least want to be laid to rest properly, and no official is going to bother themselves with retrieving the body of a Death Eater.”
The blunt, raw truth of it hurt, and Harry abruptly felt like sobbing. It was too much, he decided, pushing himself to his feet and taking several steps back.
Malfoy was eighteen like the rest of them, and he did deserve to be laid to rest like everyone else, goddamnit. But why did it have to be Harry?
“I- Malfoy- I don’t-”
“I can’t swim,” Malfoy blurted out, cutting Harry off, looking horribly pained to be saying this at all. “And I was… Unhappy. I got overwhelmed and jumped in. I changed my mind last second but it didn’t matter. It was too late. But something- something happened, Potter, I know you don’t believe me but I’m not dead, I swear-”
A cold weight settled low in Harry’s stomach, drowning out the ghost’s next words. Draco Malfoy had killed himself. Drowned himself.
He thought back to the last time he’d seen Malfoy, sitting by the lake, looking down into the water wistfully.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Malfoy insisted, looking over at Harry with an intensity in his eyes that Harry hadn’t seen in years. “I’m not dead. I know I’m not. I can feel it- Even if you don’t believe me. But I… I can’t last forever. And when I do finally die, I don’t want to sit at the bottom of a lake at Hogwarts for the rest of my… Well, death, I guess.”
He’s looking to Harry for an answer, but Harry can’t respond. He’s staring down at the reflective surface of the water, thinking about how Malfoy's body is in the water down below... Perhaps eaten, perhaps just sitting amongst the green growth of algae, bloated and rotting-...
“Malfoy-... Malfoy, I think-...”
"I'm not dead!" Malfoy shouted, slamming his fist into the wooden dock- or rather, tried. His fist sunk through the wood and he stumbled slightly, half of his body sinking into the wood.
Clearly new to being a ghost, as he floated just that bit higher to give himself the appearance of sitting on the ledge again before signing, slouching in on himself as he hugged his fist to his chest, body righting itself to sit on the dock properly again.
"I'm not," he insisted again, then glared at Harry.
“Okay,” Harry finally spoke, his voice cracked and raw. “Then… Then you’re alive. Shouldn’t we get you out of the lake to begin with? So we can try to figure out how to make you not a ghost?”
Maybe, if Malfoy saw his own body, it would trigger some sort of recognition. Acknowledgement of decay; of no longer taking breaths or having a beating heart.
Malfoy shook his head. “I think that would just kill me. I think the lake is somehow keeping me alive.”
Harry let out a loud, humorless laugh. “Malfoy, you sound insane right now. I can’t… I can’t deal with this. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll get your body when you come to terms that you’ve died, or disappeared, or whatever, but… Fuck, the lake keeping you alive? Really? I understand you probably regret it but-”
“I thought you’d understand,” Malfoy finally spoke, cutting off Harry’s rants again. He sounded withdrawn- but also almost angry. “Of all people, I thought you, the person who’s persevered through everyone doubting you and calling you crazy about Sirius Black; about Voldemort coming back, about everything, would understand what it’s like to be right and not be trusted. I didn’t tell you so you could freak out, I told you so that you might understand. And don’t you? Just a little?”
Harry swallowed, eyes wide and he was sure glossy with tears, staring at Malfoy.
He noticed more things now. Or rather, more things made sense. The gurgling, warped twang to Malfoy’s voice- like he was underwater. The heavy, weighted look to his clothes, like he was soaked.
Though… The voice didn’t make sense. Ghosts could talk normally, no matter what injury or death they faced. Nick was nearly decapitated and he could talk. The Headless Hunt could talk, and there was nothing attached to their lungs. It wouldn’t make sense for Malfoy to suddenly have a restricted quality if he was actually dead. Besides, now that he thought about it, No ghost he knew of showed coloration, even in reflections. Ghosts floated by mirrors and were still gray, and Moaning Myrtle’s reflection in the water never showed pigmentation either. Even ghosts who were denying their death usually didn’t acknowledge their body, either- they left it behind and proceeded life as a ghost as if they were still human. Malfoy, however, was conscious of the separation of his body and spirit. Soul. Whatever it was.
Harry’s eyes widened. “You’re not dead.”
Malfoy looked relieved as he curled a half-smirk, half-sneer across his face. “I told you that from the start, didn’t I?”
Harry tentatively moved closer, back towards the edge of the water, staring down into the black, impenetrable surface as he sat down next to Malfoy again. He wasn’t so terrified now that he knew there wasn’t a rotting corpse at the bottom of the lake. Just a whole body that may or may not be properly alive. “I just assumed you were in denial, or had too many regrets to move on. Ninety-three percent of ghosts don’t last more than a year or two because they finally accept that they’re dead, you know. So statistically, I was pretty good in my assumption.”
Malfoy huffed out a laugh. “Regurgitate that from one of Granger’s lectures, did you?”
Harry shrugged. “Now, I believe you’re… At least partially alive, or both alive and dead, or something- whatever the case, I believe your body is alive, but I don’t know what I could possibly do.”
“I’m not expecting you to do anything,” Malfoy said, somewhat stiffly. “I’m expecting you to retrieve me if I die. That’s it.”
“And I’m supposed to just let you die? Wait around for you to kick the bucket?”
Malfoy winced and Harry realized he’d probably just hit a little too close to home. After all, that is exactly what Malfoy had tried to do- kick his own bucket. Even succeeded, in a way, considering he was a ghost, even if only in part. “Sorry,” Harry tried to remedy. Malfoy waved him off.
“Whatever. I’m trying to understand why I’m still alive myself. By all means, I should have died.”
Harry felt the somewhat nauseous feeling trying to surface again, but he forced it down. “Hermione might know. I only know one way someone can… Die and still be alive, but surely…”
Malfoy grimaced at Hermione’s name. “I’d rather not involve Granger.”
“She’s your best bet,” Harry countered.
“You don’t understand,” Malfoy insisted, looking somewhat panicked. “Even my friends don’t know how I ended up like this. They think someone pushed me, or killed me themselves and just dropped my body in. They don’t believe I’m alive, nor do they know how I ended up like this. I don’t want to have to explain it to anyone else. Having to explain it to you was enough.”
Harry frowned. “Then why did you tell me at all? I would’ve expected you telling me to fuck-off to be rather on-brand for you. Not sharing something like that with me and no one else.”
“Because I needed you to retrieve my body,” Malfoy said, sounding frustrated. “It’s the only way you would. If you knew the truth- knew how pitiful it was.” The blond sent him a glare. “You have a horrible savior complex. I wouldn’t be a Slytherin if I didn’t pander it to my advantage.”
Harry had to admit he was right and sighed. “So you don’t want anyone to know.”
“No. I don’t. And I don’t want you running your mouth, either.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I won’t. Even if you only told me to get me to do something, it was still in confidence.”
Malfoy gave him a once-over before nodding firmly. “Good. See? Savior complex with Gryffindor nobility. The combination that never fails.”
Harry rolled his eyes again. He must have gotten it from Malfoy. Spending too much time around the git.
“So what if we don’t tell her? Just tell her you don’t remember or something.”
Malfoy’s brows rose up into his wet-haired fringe. “Are you encouraging me to lie to your best friend? No, not me- us? You want us to lie to your best friend?”
Harry glared at him. “I don’t want to, but some idiot had to go get himself half-killed and doesn’t live to tell the tale properly. Don’t project this onto me.”
A huffed breath, followed by a short bout of silence, then... “Fine. We’ll tell Granger I blacked out. I woke up at the bottom of the lake looking at my own body, came to the surface, realized everything. That’s close enough to the truth.”
“Alright. Fine. I… Next weekend?”
Malfoy nodded curtly. “Fine.”
“Well.. Goodbye then.”
Malfoy didn’t respond, and once again, Harry walked back into the castle without looking back at the ghostly apparition, standing by the lake and looking over the water with a forlorn expression.