Chapter 3
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."
*
They all begin to spend a lot of time together; Draco, Harry, Ron and Hermione. Draco and Ron are essentially forced to spend time together by association. Not even fighting a twelve-foot mountain troll, it seems, can make them friends.
Draco and Hermione do a lot of their homework together in the library, cross-checking answers with each other. Professor Flitwick has assigned a few extra difficult, hypothetical questions for Charms. It's not obligatory, but any student who is looking to gain further knowledge can attempt them. Nobody does them except, maybe, the Ravenclaws and the most studious of their Houses; them being Draco, Hermione, and Blaise, as far as Harry knows.
Once, they get different answers and Hermione corrects a logical mistake on Draco's part. There's a question that they both struggle to solve, but together they work it out between themselves. The third question, they pass each other their notebooks, having different answers again, and Draco explains his own thoughts on it.
"Oh, that does make more sense." Hermione pulls her notebook back as Draco slides it to her and she bends her head over it, muttering as she goes to fix her work, "How had I not thought of that?"
Ron gags. "How is this happening?"
"It's okay," Harry whispers, patting his arm consolingly. "At least you've got me."
And Ron's got him indeed. They are both the same when it comes to academics; not very interested. Ron often pleads with Hermione until she rolls her eyes and gives in and makes him promise he'll do better on the upcoming test as payment, and Harry is frequently forgetful that he has any homework or tests at all until Draco pushes him into it. Thus, Harry and Ron bond over how much they just do not like studying.
Harry likes Ron a lot. He is easy to talk to and be with. They play chess and Exploding Snap together when Hermione and Draco go off to the library to study and neither of them feel like tagging along, and Ron tells him all about his family and their antics; Fred and George and their pranks, uptight Percy Weasley who is a Prefect, Bill in the Curse-breaking Department of the Ministry, Charlie who works with dragons, and his father who works in the Muggle-related Department, Ginny Weasley who has apparently got a crush on Harry, even though they've never talked. They also share a fascination with Quidditch.
"I can't believe you're the first youngest Seeker since ages," Ron says. "You're quite good, though I... didn't want to think it. Didn't think I'd ever befriend a Slytherin. I mean, no offense! It's just, you know... it's the House feud. And, er, a Malfoy and Weasley feud..."
He trails off there, as if concerned he might say something that Harry won't like. Harry's not good at tolerating anything bad said about Draco, but behind Ron's back, he doesn't take it from Draco either when he says unkind things about Ron. Only when it's to each other's faces and not crossing lines that Harry lets them duke it out between themselves, though Hermione is less tolerant of their bickering.
"Yeah, Draco's told me," Harry says. "I suppose I get it. Or not really. But I can't say much about any of it, can I?" Ron shrugs and Harry changes the topic. "Will you try out next year?"
"I think I might, yeah. I used to play with my brothers and sister in my backyard all the time." Ron grins. "We might go up against each other. If I get it, I mean!"
"I'm sure you can. I've seen you too and you've got a lot of practice. But you just seem to get nervous a lot, is all." Harry smiles. "I won't go easy on you, just so you know."
"I wasn't asking, tosser," Ron says, and Harry laughs when he throws a chess piece at him. The chess piece screams, and dusts itself off with a glower at Ron and then Harry after it's landed. It jumps and smacks itself into Harry's cheek in vengeance.
"Ow, Jesus! What did I even do!?"
Ron throws his head back and laughs.
*
Ron tells Harry about the three-headed dog he and Neville had accidentally came upon once when Terrence Higgs, a Slytherin one year above them, challenged him to a midnight duel. Neville was his overlooker. It turned out to be a trick, and in trying to escape Filch and his cat, the two of them ran into a room.
Harry's mind makes an unbidden connection to the dog with the injury on Professor Snape's leg. He's seen him limping today too, walking out of the library. Could it be?
"He might have been trying to get to what the three-headed dog was guarding," Hermione says thoughtfully. "But why?"
Draco doesn't seem to be liking this conversation. "Look, I know him better than any of you, and there's no way he'll do anything with ill intentions. I'm sure he had a good reason, even if he did try to get through the dog. What about Hagrid? Maybe he knows something. Harry said he was acting strange when the Gringotts robbery came up."
They decide to visit Hagrid after Harry's first Quidditch match.
Before the match, all in his Quidditch gear and holding his broom upright in a hand, Harry glances at Draco tentatively. In the background, Lee is making pre-match commentary.
Draco has always said he would be Slytherin's Seeker. He was sure of it. But ever since Harry was given the position, Draco never spoke of it again. He never seemed angry about it either. If anything, he was excited for Harry when he received the offer from Snape, that he'd be the youngest Seeker in a century, and even encouraged him to accept, but it took him a while to realise what it must mean to Draco and it's been weighing on his mind ever since that Draco's hopes got dashed this way. He kept thinking of bringing it up but never knew how.
"Are you okay with this?" Harry asks. Draco looks at him, brows furrowed inquiringly. His words go fast, explanatory, "It's just... it's just I know you've always wanted to be Seeker, and I didn't mean to take it away from you, I should have thought more about it at the time before I said yes to it and if... if you're hurt and upset in any way then I will resign after this match because this isn't as important as you. Just say the word and I'll resign, okay? I swear." Yes, he loves this. Yes, he loves the idea of being Seeker, but not as much as he loves being Draco's friend.
Draco's eyes go sober, a little exasperatedly fond. "No, I don't want you to resign. I told you to take it myself, didn't I? And well." He shrugs. "You're the only one that's allowed to take anything from me." His lips quirk at Harry, a crooked, mellow thing. "And I think I'll try out for Chaser next year."
At the Quidditch match, Harry's broom goes out of control. Later, he will find out Hermione saw Professor Snape mumbling through her binoculars, and to stop him from it, she crawled under the benches and set fire to his robes and it was only then that everything returned to normal. Harry catches the Snitch into his mouth and makes Slytherin victorious.
"Are you joking?" Draco snaps, when he hears of her setting fire to his godfather's robes, all of them gathered in Hagrid's hut. "Hermione, what the hell?"
"It stopped after that," Ron says. "So there's your proof."
"I noticed that too," Harry says quietly.
"It can't be," Draco mutters, shaking his head. "There's no way. I'll have to ask him when I see him."
"No, you can't!" Hermione insists. "If it's him-"
"It's not."
"Now why would Professor Snape want to hurt Harry?" Hagrid huffs, as if this seems ridiculous. He keeps seeming very uneasy.
"I don't know. Why did he try to get past the three-headed dog?" Ron shoots back. "It's all connected, isn't it?"
Hagrid is not the greatest at keeping secrets, spilling things in between conversation without meaning to and leaving them clues inadvertently and panicking at being asked questions. He lets slip that the three-headed monster belongs to him, and he named it Fluffy ("Fluffy?!" Both Draco and Ron exclaim at the same time, and then glower at each other.) And that whatever is being guarded by the dog is known only by Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel.
*
Hermione goes home for the Christmas holidays while the rest of them stay at Hogwarts. Harry doesn't want to go back because when given the choice between the Dursleys and Hogwarts, it's hardly a choice, and Draco stays behind so he can be with Harry and because he finds the Christmas parties at his Manor boring (Harry still doesn't understand it), and at least Hogwarts is something new to him. Ron stays, also, for Harry, and for something new, and because his parents are going away to Romania to visit his brother, Charlie.
Hogwarts is stunning at this time of year, more so than Privet Drive ever was. Magic is woven into every corner; the fairylights are ethereal, softer, brighter, and truly fairylike, dancing around each other where they hang on the walls. The Christmas tree is enormous at the front of the Great Hall, beaded with glowing, decorative pieces, and seem tinged with magic as well to make it more vivid and pretty. Everything is more vivid and pretty.
Harry thought, at first, that it was only the way he saw it, comparing it to every Christmas he has ever had, but Ron told him it wasn't, that there truly was magic in it. From somewhere, a sweet, soothing tune constantly plays in the Great Hall, like the tinkles of a bell, never tiring or bothersome.
Outside the windows and balustrades, winter-grey skies dim the world with its somber beauty, all the hills and plains white and gentle and fresh with snow. Some days, Harry can sit against his windowsill or lean his arms on a balustrade and just watch it for ages in lovely silence.
He loves winter. He has come to love it since last year.
This is when the world changed in his eyes.
Once, Draco gets roped into playing chess with Harry and Ron. Harry isn't the best at it, but Ron is. Draco is quite good as well. Out of the two of them, he is more of a challenge to Ron, but neither of them have managed to win against him, which makes Draco nearly flip the board. He keeps asking for a rematch. He will keep asking for a rematch until he wins. Ron is smug and keeps accepting it just so he can keep making Draco even angrier.
It's the longest day Harry has ever had.
*
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.