Chapter 10
There's a mountain troll loose in the school and it's somewhere by the girl's lavatory. The prefects of every House are directing the students back towards their dormitories. Slytherins are to be divided among the Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws and Gryffindors and are to stay overnight there until the troll is confined again.
"Definitely Ravenclaws," Draco says, dragging Harry by the hand towards the students in blue. His hand is tight around Harry's, to make sure they don't get lost from each other in the bustling crowd of students. "I'm not spending an entire night with the Gryffindorks or the marshmallow House."
"You know what marshmallows are?" Harry asks.
"I've read about them in a book."
Oh, right. Yes. It's interesting because there's still a lot that Draco is learning when it comes to the muggle world, since he's always been so isolated in a pureblood culture, but he also knows many things only in theory or imagination because of the muggle books he's read, mostly books he's getting to read only now that he can borrow them from Daphne. His father obviously would have never allowed any to be kept in the Malfoy library. Draco has still never seen a car, for one, and once Harry asked him to draw out what he thinks it looks like and what he drew looked nothing like a car.
At the present moment, they are rushing after the Ravenclaws when Neville Longbottom passes them by, shouting at Ron Weasley, panicked, "Hermione! I think she's still in the loo!"
Harry skids to a halt, and Draco jerks back with him.
"I'll get her!" Ron is saying loudly over the noise, "You get the Professors!"
"What are you doing?" Draco hisses, trying to tug him along.
"Didn't you hear Neville? Hermione's in the girl's loo!"
Draco pales. Apparently, he hadn't honed in on the conversation like Harry had. "We have to tell the Professors!"
The Professors will have to be found or are all the way across the Great Hall, on the other side of large crowds, and for all they know, the troll is already there and Hermione is in danger as they speak.
"Neville's already going! We have to go help her!" Harry pulls at his hand.
"Harry, no!" Draco shouts, hauling him back. "Be smart about this. We won't know how to! We have to get the Professors first before we can help!"
"There's no time to wait!" Harry shouts back, slipping his hand out of Draco's and running after the two Gryffindors. "I'm sorry!"
"Harry Potter, so help me, I will feed you to the troll myself if you go!" Draco's yelling voice is growing distant.
Five minutes later, Draco is huffing and puffing in anger and stomping more than jogging next to Harry. By the time they've reached the loo, many of the sinks and stalls are destroyed and there's water spraying all over. Hermione is curled up and shaking under one of the intact sinks and the troll's club is about to come down somewhere near her.
"Oi! Peabrain!" Ron yells, throwing a rock at the back of the ghastly troll's head. It stops, and stumbles around towards his voice.
The troll roars and brings him club down towards Ron. Ron jumps out of the way, shattered tiles left in his wake. "Hermione, move!"
Draco runs to her in this bout of the troll's distraction. "Come on, get up!" he whispers to her furiously, gripping Hermione's arm and trying to pull her up. She whimpers but, fortified by the presence of another person by her side, gets up and grips the side of Draco's shirt as they try to make their way around the troll carefully, stuck to the walls.
The club raises again, and Ron, wide-eyed and at a deadend, brings his arms up.
That is, until Harry charges at the beast from behind, arms hung tight around its wide neck. "Run!" he yells, stuffing his wand up its nose. Ron scrambles to his feet and runs to the front of the door, spinning back around.
The troll throws its torso around to shake Harry off, roaring in anger. It stomps its feet around, its club accidentally swung into another stall. Everybody screams. Draco and Hermione clutch at each other, ducked against the wall.
"Do something!" Hermione exclaims, her and Draco finally staggering by the door next to Ron. The troll now has Harry flung upside down and is rattling him around, giving him the worst headache.
"Like what?" Ron sounds panicked.
"Like taking out your wands, for one!" Draco bellows.
"Any time now!" Harry is sure he will never see anything straight ever again.
Ron casts the Wingardium Leviosa spell they learned in Charms (Swish and Flick, Hermione whispers to him, demonstrating the motions). It turns out to be remarkably lucky, levitating the club in the air for a brief second before it drops onto the troll's head.
The grip on Harry's leg loosens, and Hermione incants a spell that may be responsible for why Harry feels as if he's fallen on a mattress rather than cracked his head on the hard floor. He is so dizzy he can't move, and in the terrifying second that the troll teeters between falling forward and backward, Draco throws a hex at its chest that ensures it tips backward and not on top of Harry.
Hermione and Draco rush over to Harry.
"Are you alright?" Hermione asks, her hand on Harry's shoulder.
"Yeah," Harry breathes, smiling at her. She smiles back. A shared, mutual gratitude.
"That was wicked," Ron says to Harry, bright with wonder, still high on the adrenaline. He looks down at the troll, grimacing at the wand still stuck in its nose. "Nasty, but wicked."
"Of course you'd think so, like the stupid, reckless Gryffindor you are!" Draco snaps at Ron, startling him back with a jeez and an annoyed scowl, then looks to Harry to smack him hard in the chest. "You're such an idiot!"
"Ow!" Harry rubs his chest, frowning up at him like a kicked crup. "That hurt."
Draco stares at him for a second, chest heaving with anger, then promptly hugs him tight. Harry is amused by it until he feels the tremors running through him. He grips him back, a hand between his shoulderblades.
Thanks, Harry mouths to Ron over Draco's shoulder with a grin, sort of pleased that Ron thought it was wicked. Ron smiles at him back. Harry has saved Ron's life, and Ron has saved his, and there are some things, like taking down a giant mountain troll together to save a friend, that couldn't be done without it forming a bond.
The Professors Snape, McGonagall and Quirrel burst the door open and rush into the loo, ruffled up with worry. Hermione tries to take the fall for it, but Harry says, "It's not anyone's fault. How could she have known about the troll if she wasn't at dinner?"
Professor McGonagall awards both Houses points for sheer dumb luck and for subduing a troll. Harry, curiously, notices the injury on Professor Snape's leg, who shifts his robes to hide it.
"To your common rooms. Now," Professor Snape commands curtly. He sneers at Professor Quirrell, for some reason, before he whirls and walks out.
At the Slytherin table, Draco regales the story to them all with theatrical gestures and expressions, his voice beguiling and dramatic, keeping everyone on the edge of their seats or guffawing as Harry sits back and watches him tell it in the funny and fascinating ways he does. No one would know how terrified and angry he was when it happened, how he falls so entirely into the story.
"I'm still angry at you, by the way," Draco mumbles that night, drowsy.
"Okay," Harry says, amused.
"You were so stupid."
"I know."
"I don't know what you were thinking."
"I wasn't thinking much, I suppose."
"Exactly. And what does that sound like to you, Harry? What did you act like today?"
Draco sounds a lot like one of those mums Harry's seen on TV.
"A Gryffindor?"
"Yes," Draco says, as if this is insulting and a punishment. "Yes you did. It was embarrassing."
"You seemed to have loads of fun telling the story."
"It was a wild story. Slytherins never pass up an opportunity to tell a wild story. But Harry..." Draco seems more sober and awake. "I mean it. I was so scared for you, I felt my heart could have given out. Don't you care what could have happened to you?"
Harry's not sure he did, so much. Nobody else ever has.
What a strange and warm thought. To know somebody's heart was pounding with fear for him whilst his own stayed unstirred for himself.
"I didn't think about that a lot," he says again, when he doesn't know what else to say.
Draco heaves a put-upon, frustrated sigh. "Then I suppose I'll have to do all the thinking for us."
***
On Christmas, Harry finds presents below the tree in the Slytherin commons. They're all either for Harry or Draco, since they are the only first year Slytherins that stayed at Hogwarts. Draco's pile is obviously bigger, considering the amount of relatives and family friends he's told Harry he has. Harry's just amazed he has a pile at all.
The most he has come to expect for a gift is a penny or a sock (that's there too, thanks very much to all the Dursleys), far from the gigantic, broom-shaped package and five properly wrapped gifts.
There's one from Hermione; Chocolate Frogs and fudge, a knitted jumper from Ron with a big H on it, a flute from Hagrid. "I've never had presents like these before." He's only ever seen a pile of them like this on TV.
"There's one from my mum too, for you." Harry feels a bit warm to his cheeks. Draco said his mum liked him but he wasn't sure he believed it. Now, apparently, she at least likes him enough to get him a present too; a box full of what may be the fanciest French chocolates he has ever seen. Draco's presents are a handsome coat and a Nimbus 2000 broom. From a mysterious person, there is a cloak passed on to him by his father and a note that tells him to use it well.
When Harry drapes it over himself, his body disappears, which is initially alarming.
"Oh," but Draco breathes, awed, stepping forward and looking down at it. Harry calms only at that. "Oh, this is incredible... an invisibility cloak. They're very rare, did you know?"
"Yeah? It was my father's." His voice is as soft as the way he touches it with his fingers, thinking of that; his father's, that he wore it once, and the only thing Harry has ever had of his.
Later, he will show it to Ron. They play around with it a bit, Ron making all sorts of funny antics with it, the two of them falling over laughing. They spend Christmas having dinner at the Great Hall, where there was more variety of food than Harry can comprehend, and the best Christmas it could be when Ron and Fred and George come to have a snowfight with Harry on the grounds whilst Draco sat on a log and read. It was Harry and Ron against the twins, and they are both full of funny little tricks, though they're harder on Ron than Harry.
Once the Weasleys tired, they come to sit on a leg next to Harry, as Draco casts a warming charm on him. Fred and George are looking at him, with similar little smirks.
"You're a threat, aren't you?" Fred is the first to speak.
Harry is puzzled. "A threat?"
"We can't play all our little games with you," George says.
"Never met anyone who could tell us apart so well," Fred says.
"Oh. Well, you just have to pay attention, don't you?" Harry says.
Fred and George look at each other, with a small laugh.
"Yeah, you're alright, you know," Fred says, ruffling Harry's hair. Behind their shoulders, Ron grins at him, which somehow makes Harry feel as if this might be a big deal.
All the Weasleys go back to the dorms to warm up. Harry, though, is still not tired, so happy he is. He sneaks some snow down the back of Draco's coat, laughing, and then Draco is trying to get snow all over Harry's face in furious vengeance and Harry is running and dodging him around the log, but at the end of it, Draco is just laughing too, and they lay in the snow and make snow angels and see who can make them the deepest.
That night, Harry uses the invisibility cloak to get to the Restricted Section in order to retrieve the book about Nicholas Flamel.
That same night, he finds the mirror. Engraved on its border are symbols he can't read.
He sees his parents in it. His steps closer are tentative, hand reaching out.
They smile at him. It's encouraging enough, opening the hallows of his lifelong yearning once more.
Harry presses his face to it, his hands, as if he can reach inside and touch them.
"Mum? Dad?" It comes out a whisper. His heart throbs slow in his throat, love and grief.
He looks at them for a very long time like that, them looking back at him. Inside of it, his mum touches his shoulder. He thinks he almost feels it, the ghost of her hand. He brushes his fingers over the same spot, wondering if he might feel her hand there, but it's just his own shoulder.
Is it really them? Is this, perhaps, a mirror into the other side of the veil? A way to see your beloved dead again behind it?
He looks at them and he can't breathe from how much he wishes he can be there inside the mirror with them, wherever they are.
But Harry remembers his friends; his friends that he has just found, that he isn't quite ready to let go of yet.
That's how he gets the thought.
"Wait here," he whispers to them, fingers to the glass. "Don't go anywhere. Please."
Draco is yawning and very drowsy as he follows him in his invisibility cloak, but he follows him there anyway, both of them small enough to fit together. When they're there, Harry takes his arm and brings him to his parents excitedly.
"Look," Harry says, never letting go of his arm. His grin is bright, tight in his cheeks, "Look. My parents." Draco does, squinting at the mirror.
Tomorrow, he will bring Ron to meet them. When Hermione comes back, he will bring her too.
"I don't understand," Draco says, puzzled, "I only see us, Harry."
"Look closely," Harry says, tugging at him, "You'll see them."
"Harry," Draco says again, "I only see us." He frowns then, sobering slightly. "But now we're growing older. You're in Auror robes and I'm a Professor. I see my parents there in the back, and Severus... say, do you think this shows us the future?"
Harry's heart is sinking so deep he can hardly speak from the weight of it. It's not his parents. It's not his parents if everyone sees different things. "How..." He tries to push the lump out of his throat. "How can it be the future if it's showing my parents?"
It's silent, then. Draco leans his head against his. His sleepiness is returning, but they stand like that for a very long time, watching themselves and whatever visions they each see play out on it. His parents are giving Harry a sad kind of smile, as if they are apologising for not truly being themselves.
"What do they look like? Your parents?"
"My dad looks just like me. My mum has my eyes, and red hair." She is the most beautiful person Harry has ever seen.
"What are they doing right now?"
"They are smiling at us."
Draco is quiet, his eyes a little downcast in thought, their heads still together. "I'd have liked to meet them."
Harry would have loved him to meet his parents. Him and Ron and Hermione. His parents would have loved them all, he likes to think.
"Your son is a bit of a self-sacrificial pillock, Mr. and Mrs. Potter, throwing himself at trolls for others and all that sort of stuff," Draco says, his smirk small. It's the closest thing now, maybe, to him meeting them, but it's not even them. "But it's alright. I'll take care of him for you. I'll balance him out with my self-preservation skills, my caution... my cunning, cleverness and good looks..."
Harry's slight laugh is thick in his throat. His parents laugh with him too, soundless, the way they look like they did in pictures; his mother with her whole face and a duck of her head, his father's grin lighting his eyes. He wonders how it all works, if this is how they really would have reacted or if it's just how he imagines they would.
He takes Draco back to the dorms to sleep and lets him take his hand gently in comfort. But when he's fallen asleep, Harry carefully slips out of bed, puts on his invisibility cloak again and goes back to the room with the mirror and his parents in it.
And he sits there with his legs crossed in front of the mirror and he stares at them for hours. They're so beautiful. He thinks he might like to stare at them forever.