Chapter 7
Despite McGonagall’s rules, Malfoy didn’t show up that night, nor the next morning, and for once, Harry didn’t try to find him.
Instead, Harry took the time at breakfast, far away from everyone else, to finally talk to Ron and Hermione about what he found out last night.
“So, Malfoy isn’t a horcrux,” he blurted, checking around them to make sure they were still the only ones around.
“What?” Hermione frowned, brows furrowing. “But we were all so certain-”
“It’s me,” Harry again blurted, before Hermione could go on some sort of tangent. “I’m the horcrux. Again.”
Ron paled, looking sick, and Hermione’s lips pursed tightly together. “Harry, if You-Know-Who is back-”
“What?” Harry blinked, then shook his head. “No. Malfoy. I’m Malfoy’s horcrux. He made me one by accident.”
Ron looked less sick and more just angry, now. “What? Malfoy used black magic to make you a horcrux after he tried to bloody-”
“He didn’t mean to,” Harry repeated, getting a bit irritated with the continued wrong assumptions and jumping into what he was trying to tell them. “I believe him. He looked horrified, and Malfoy’s not a good actor. He apologized, too, when we’re alone. Looked disgusted with himself. I rather think he’s always been scared the dark magic around him would taint him, and now he’s gone and panicked and split his soul into three pieces just like the man, creature, he feared most.”
Hermione frowned. “Harry, this is serious. We don’t know nearly enough about horcruxes to-”
“I know,” Harry spoke up. “Pomfrey, McGonagall and some supposed experts are gonna work on it, I guess, try to figure out how to extract the horcrux from me and do some sort of exorcism on Malfoy’s ghost to get his soul all back into his body. Preferably without damaging me or any other part of his soul, but we’ll see.”
“You’re really all too calm for all this to be happening to you again,” Ron said with a grimace, nudging Harry’s foot under the table. “I’m sorry mate. This shouldn’t be yours to deal with again.”
A sudden burst of emotion for his best friends surged up and threatened to make him emotional, but he pushed it back down, nudging Ron’s foot back and giving them both a weak smile, but a smile nonetheless. “I know. It’s alright, though. I got you guys to get me through it, as always.”
Hermione did tear up at that, looking like she was going to leap across the table to hug him, but he quickly busied himself with breakfast while Ron chuckled and hugged his girlfriend while she sniffled.
“We’re always here for you Harry, you know that.”
“Of course I do Mione.”
“Once Malfoy’s back in his body, we’ll be sure to give him a thrashing for making you go through this again,” Ron promised, and Harry couldn’t help but grin.
“Sounds like a plan, mate.”
Half-way through the slow Saturday morning in the dorms, Malfoy walked through the front door. Quite literally through it, considering it couldn’t open.
Harry was the first to notice him, followed by Ron and Hermione. Parkinson and Zabini picked up on their silence and followed their gaze, subconsciously shifting in their seats to make room.
After that, however, Lavender Brown screamed.
Chaos broke out of the room after that. People needlessly screamed without even knowing why Lavender had, scrambling up out of seats and up against walls with their wands drawn, and others looked around, gazes skipping right over Malfoy as they looked for a more tangible, visible threat with wands flinging around.
“Everyone calm down!” Harry finally shouted, sick of the screaming that was sure to give him a massive headache. “Put your wands away before someone gets hurt! Merlin!”
He hated that, immediately, his words seemed to work. He hated that they still idolized and obeyed him, even his peers who’d seen the worst of him and grown up as kids into adults alongside him.
“All this fuss for little old me?” Malfoy finally drawled, drawing everyone’s attention to the door where he was still standing, an amused sneer on his expression. “I’m flattered, truly.”
“Don’t start shit, Malfoy,” Harry warned. “Everyone’s riled up enough as is.”
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I simply wish to sit with my peers, is that such a trying ask?” Even as he said it, however, he glanced over at the students still cowering against the back wall. “What’s the matter? You all look like you’ve seen, oh, I don’t know… A ghost.”
He cackled when they gaped at him. Harry, having enough of the git, threw a book that soared right through Malfoy’s head and hit the door behind him.
Malfoy whipped around to glare at him, bringing his hands up to his hair as if the book had messed it up. “That’s not funny, Potter.”
“Nor is you antagonizing people. Lay off.”
Seamus Finnigan, one of the few people who had fought at the forefront of the war and was both brave and stupid enough to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, snuck forward towards Malfoy while the blond was focused on Harry and promptly stuck his arm through Malfoy’s chest. Malfoy shuddered and looked down, grimacing at the fist that stuck out the front of the sternum. “If you’d be so kind, Finnigan, ask before suddenly penetrating someone.”
“Is this a joke, Harry?” Seamus asked instead of acknowledging Malfoy, looking over at Harry with wide eyes as he swished his arm around inside Malfoy’s chest, who irritably stepped away. Harry sighed.
“I wish. No, he’s a ghost right now. McGonagall is trying to get it figured out.”
“Figured out?” Neville echoed, looking wide eyed and a bite pale. “Mate he’s dead.”
Malfoy sniffed irritably. “Am not.”
“You’re a ghost,” Neville said pointedly, looking somewhat incredulous. “As in your spirit has exited your body? You’re either dead or seriously messed up.”
“The latter, if you insist on calling it that.”
“How did you end up like that?” Padma Patil asked, looking somewhat sullen. “It wasn’t during the… The war, was it?”
The room held a sombered bit of silence at the mention, and even Malfoy seemed to know to not mess around with his answer here. “No, it wasn’t during the war.”
“He had his trial, remember?” Pavarti piped up, looking at her twin. “He wasn’t a ghost then.”
“Good,” she said determinedly. “Even if you’re rotten, we don’t need more casualties on anyone’s hands.”
“I’m not-” Malfoy stifled his next words, though Harry didn’t know if he was going to argue against being ‘rotten’ or ‘dead’, simply resigning with a sigh. “Yes, you’re right Patil.”
Malfoy walked across the room towards his friends, seemingly avoiding stepping through people as much as possible- he walked and acted so naturally, it was like he’d just drunk a potion to make him less opaque rather than being a ghost- collapsing down on the couch next to Pansy, draping his arms over the back of the couch on either side of him as he lifted his legs to rest them on the coffee table- though, based on what he’d told Harry, Malfoy felt nothing of what he was doing. It was all just experienced floating to look natural.
Everyone, very hesitantly went to do their own thing, but one after one, several people came up to ask Harry what was actually wrong with Malfoy. Every time, Harry sent them away with an irritated “if you want to know so bad, ask him yourself.”
They never did ask, though Harry suspected that was more out of fear of Malfoy, even as a ghost, rather than lack of curiosity.
People openly stared and whispered at Malfoy, whose neck got more and more stiff, and jaw slowly became clenched more often than not, even as he tried to ignore it to seemingly catch up on gossip with his friends. Harry didn’t blame him, but also found some sort of twisted satisfaction in the fact that Malfoy was finally getting all the attention he begged for over the years and was now loathing it. He could only think that it served him right.
“Harry, your nose is a bit swollen,” Hermione suddenly spoke, squinting at Harry. “Did you hit it on something?”
Harry glanced at Malfoy and the other students who, for once, were more focused on Malfoy than him. He hadn’t bothered to tell Ron or Hermione about the fight, but now that Hermione was asking him directly, he couldn’t find it in him to lie.
“Me and Malfoy… Got in a bit of a fight.”
And for once, he was telling the absolute truth, and his friends didn’t believe him.
Ron openly snorted at him. “Yeah, fistfight with a ghost, good one mate. You trip on the stairs or something?”
Harry huffed out through his nose irritably. “I’m being serious. We got pissed off at each other and he swung at me. I didn’t move because, obviously, I didn’t think it would land, but he broke my nose, cracked one of my teeth and split my lip before he realized that the whole thing was completely bizarre. I pushed him, too, and I could actually touch him.”
Ron looked dumbfounded. “You let a ghost beat you up?”
Harry grimaced and Hermione smacked him in the shoulder. “That’s significantly less important than the fact that they touched each other, Ronald!”
Harry’s eyes widened. “Please don’t say it like that, Mione.”
Ron gagged and Hermione frowned impatiently, rolling her eyes. “Seriously, boys, this is important! Harry, you brought Malfoy closer to being alive again! Is it all the time or just that once?”
“It was just the once, because when we first met again, I stuck my hand through his shoulder,” Harry replied honestly, shrugging helplessly. “But Pomfrey said when I… Eurgh. When I placed my handon Malfoy's body, at Pomfrey's instruction, she said he started trying to breathe and his heart rate picked up and color came back and all that, because I’m housing part of his soul, or whatever, so when we got close… But again, I started screaming and having flashbacks and in general being in pain, so.”
“I wonder what allowed the soul in you and the soul in his ghost to connect like that?” Hermione pondered, brows furrowing. “If I hadn’t already done all the research there is on horcruxes, I’d be optimistic to find an answer, but this is the second time in history someone’s been made a horcrux, and both times, it’s been you. You’re the only possible person with an answer, Harry.”
Harry looked over at Malfoy, who had just poked Parkinson to the best of his ghostly ability. She startled at first, but quickly shifted forward to turn the page of the book resting open on the coffee table. He murmured what appeared to be a thank you and leaned over the book, brows furrowed in thought as he read.
Harry just shrugged as he turned back to Hermione. “I really don’t know. We pissed each other off and then he swung at me and it landed.”
“Maybe your guys’ emotions being in sync let you touch,” Ron guessed with a one-shouldered shrug, popping a chocolate frog into his mouth and continuing to speak as he chewed. “You gave his soul something to connect with but from the outside, y’know?”
Hermione looked over at Ron with a stunned expression, not even bothering to chastise him for chewing with his mouth open. “You might actually be on to something, Ron.”
Ron shrugged again, and Hermione turned back towards Harry. “It’s a possibility worth exploring. Whenever You-Know-Who would get mad, you’d see into his mind, and you always were a bit hot-headed- maybe enough to let you see into his head. Or maybe anger is just such a strong emotion that it brings the horcruxes together enough through some sort of emotional binding? Perhaps any strong emotion would allow the two of you to touch?”
“That seems like a very loose basis to go off of,” Harry said cautiously, glancing back over at Malfoy, who was wrinkling his nose at something Zabini had said.
“Horcruxes are a very emotional thing, Harry. It’s not going to be very deeply rooted in arithmancy or… or logic. Black magic rarely is- it’s why dark magic is so rare, but powerful when achieved. It gets its strength through strong emotions like loathing or jealousy or bitterness. Not everyone has the emotional capacity to manage it, yet alone let it not consume them the second they succeed.”
Harry wondered when Draco Malfoy was suddenly capable of dark magic. What was the emotion he was feeling when he drowned? What did he feel that gave him the surge of magic that allowed him to cast something so difficult?
Harry scrubbed his hands over his face and, with a sigh, pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going for a walk. Keep him in line for me, will you?” He gestured vaguely at Malfoy and, without waiting for a response, headed his way out of the dorms.
Flying. Flying sounded nice. He’d been doing nothing but thinking of Malfoy for the last several days, and he hadn’t had the opportunity to go flying since the start of the new year.
Just a quick fly, to take his mind off of things, then he’d come back for lunch and start the day without thinking of the horcrux or Voldemort or what he might have to do to get Malfoy back to normal- if Malfoy would ever be normal again at all.
He sighed, shoving his way into the broom shed by the quidditch pitch. Even his thoughts about clearing his mind had to be about Malfoy, didn't they?