Chapter 3
Blaise is right. Blaise is usually right, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise, really, but Draco does not care to admit that he is absolutely miserable over it. It’s just not fair. Millicent is angry with Draco, which Draco could care less about, but that means she and Daphne avoid him all week, and that means there’s no one to distract Pansy with, because Slag and Soil are about the thickest sludge in the cauldron. Blaise has never seemed to care who exactly he is with, which means he is probably just choosing Daphne and Millicent to make a point—or because he finds Pansy as overbearing as Draco does. Draco almost even considers spending time with Nott or Davis and Bones, at one point, but he’s not that desperate.
He’s a Malfoy. Malfoys are never desperate. If he’s alone, it’s a choice, because no one here is worth his time.
There are only about forty students in the house in total, though, which means they’re all inevitably stuck together when quidditch comes around. Draco manages to squeeze in between Daphne and Crabbe—maybe Daphne’s still upset, but she’s not likely to hex him for it, and the only other spot is between Pansy and Nott. No, thank you.
It’s Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw, hardly a match to write home about, except Draco just knows half the school has already done exactly that. Why? Potter.
It’s always Harry bloody Potter. First, he went and got that scar on his face—not even an attractive scar, just looks like he tried to run through a broken window—and then he had to go and save Schlongbottom, making the rest of them suffer through the rest of the year with that witless squib, and now? Now he’s gone and gotten himself special permission to fly for Ravenclaw—halfway into the year, with actual playtime, as a first-year. That’s just outright cheating, isn’t it? Draco could pull it off, but he’d have to be clever about it. A Slytherin knows when to pick his battles. Severus might let him on the team, if he asked Father to press the issue, but Severus also might just curse his broom to prove a point.
Slytherin, of course, is out en mass for Hufflepuff (over Ravenclaw, which has to be a first in the entire history of the school) to scout out the competition. Gryffindor seems torn; Finnigan—half-blood, Irish shrimp—has his robes charmed with yellow stripes, like an incandescent bumblebee, while Weasley and Longbottom have painted their faces a sickening blue that’s patchy from the spotty rain, not even bothering with an umbrella charm. The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, of course, have lost their ruddy minds. With Potter on the team, Ravenclaw seems to have been dosed with some sort of mass delusion spell, while Hufflepuff, realizing the challenge, has doubled down on their fanatical house loyalty. Except for Granger, but she doesn’t seem to understand the rules of the game at all, as she cheers and winces regardless of which team has scored or crashed, annoying Bones, who’s dragged Davis right to the front.
Not that he’s wasting his mind on them.
The most infuriating part? Potter’s not bad. Everyone had seen when his broom came in: a Cleansweep 8, busting right down the myth of his inherited fortunes. If Draco were playing, Father would have him on a Firebolt, of course. Some have tried to spy on Ravenclaw’s practice, but no one wants to get any closer to the dementors than they have to, so no one’s got a good look at Potter until now. He flies like he’s been training for a decade. Maybe he has. Money is one thing, but there are plenty of fools who would commit treason for the chance to work with Harry Potter, and there are plenty of fools in the Quidditch world. As for chasing? It’s hard to say whether he’s good or having a good day. For the most part, the three of them—Potter, Bradley, and Davies—are flying tight, sticking to obviously drilled plays that Potter must have soaked up like a tergeo to have slotted in so seamlessly after only two months, but there’s nothing special.
It’s almost disappointing. People came out hoping to see what the new addition is capable of, and he’s just playing like he’s already been there for years. Certainly better than Dupont was, but that's no feat. His best play is a feint, driving in on Fleef in a covering hunch and taking a throw on the right hoop while Davies angled in from the upper left with the actual Quaffle in hand. The greater performance of the match comes from the Hufflepuff beaters, who drive the Ravenclaw keeper to distraction. Chang’s flying the same trickery that had been the one bright spot of Ravenclaw’s dismal attempt against Slytherin back in November, but Diggory works too closely with his chasers to be put off long.
In short, the first half-hour of the match drags out with neither team gaining enough of an advantage through chasing to make much of a difference. Chang finally takes the first true pursuit that would’ve given Ravenclaw the easy win if not for Hufflepuff’s beaters, and Diggory, seeming to realize it’ll be a seeker’s game, finally pulls back to his position.
That’s what the Ravenclaws have been waiting for. Diggory pulls up to get a read on the field, and suddenly the Ravenclaw chasers are dominating the pitch, holding possession so completely it’s only when Fleef manages a deflection that the quaffle falls back in the Hufflepuff’s hands. And not for long, anyway. Davies, as captain, leads the break from the set plays, driving Potter and Bradley to their sharpest. Potter’s rough edges become visible in his imprecise and low-velocity throws, but he makes up for it in speed, pushing his Cleansweep 8 beyond what it should be capable of with precise acceleration and sharp turns and stops, an uncanny sight for where the quaffle will be before it’s gotten there, and fast reflexes for intercepting passes. And when the quaffle is in his hands, he does not fumble it once, even as the rain gets worse. The crowds are bursting with excitement as the points rack up—one hundred fifty, sixty, eighty, two hundred— If Diggory doesn’t catch the snitch fast, it’s not going to matter. And if Chang catches it—
Both teams are tiring as the score approaches a two-hundred-point gap. Fleef is the worst off, since he’s practically carrying the rest of his team now that Diggory’s seeking, but one of Ravenclaw’s beaters lets her bat slip and it goes flying into her partner, knocking her off her broom, and they can hear the crack of breaking bone all the way from the stands. Disgusting. And the crowd is tiring, too, the excitement draining as the rain clouds darken and thicken.
It’s as Potter’s chasing a deflection Fleef knocks high, a lob intended only to buy time, that the rain begins to freeze.
The quaffle carries on in its arc, dropping off back towards the pitch, but Potter doesn’t speed into the dive he’d need to intersect it. He’s not even looking at the quaffle as his ascent slows, but off, into the clouds that are looming ever closer. Someone shouts that he must have seen the snitch—what else—Draco squints—should’ve brought the omnioculars from the World Cup, what was he thinking—
But from the clouds emerges not the snitch, but a dementor.
One, first. Then three. Five—a swarm racking up as quickly as the Ravenclaws have been piling on points— there’s screaming, pointing—
What the hell is Potter doing, just sitting there—
Oh—
He’s falling from his broom.
And the dementors are swooping closer. Not to catch him, but to devour his soul.
Daphne grabs Draco’s hand with a gasp, startling Draco—she’s white as a sheet, hair plastered to her pale cheeks like a drowned corpse—and he hears something in the distance that might be his own voice, might be hers. The rain’s more ice, cutting into them, and her hand is colder still—the whole world is cold—cold and dark and wretched as hell and the locked doors of an empty room—
And Potter’s still falling, and the dementors closing in—behind him people are rushing towards the stairs, but Draco’s at the front of the box, and all he can do is stare as—
White lights burst from the staff box, and one by one, patronus charms erupt, charging the dementors and chasing them back. The fleeing students still, relief washing over them, heat returning to their bodies. Even the rain seems to lessen, the clouds to brighten—
And still Potter falls. Silhouetted, a dark shape rushes in—
And in an eerily mirrored reprisal of what everyone had seen back in September, Cedric Diggory catches Harry Potter mid-fall.
Unlike Potter, Diggory manages to hoist his burden up onto his broom without losing his grip. And unlike Longbottom, Potter is rag-doll limp.
The remainder of the players, the ones who had not panicked and flown off at the first sight of dementors, rush towards Diggory as he lowers them to the ground, and even across the pitch, over the din as everyone starts moving again, still eager to retreat to the relative safety of the castle, Draco can hear Hooch shrieking to give them space. Severus, somehow, is already down on the pitch. Chang, meanwhile, has flown to the staff box and seems to be holding a conversation with the professors, and whispers quickly carry as to why: in the confusion, she’d managed to catch the snitch. There’s a general motion of discontent. That can’t have counted towards the match; there have to be rules against—well, taking advantage of life-threatening disruptions—right? Otherwise there would be a good deal more of it—
And then, Dumbledore’s voice is echoing around them, announcing the end of the match, entreating them to make their way back to the castle in an orderly fashion. Potter is swallowed up in the mess of bodies on the pitch, vanishing down to the locker rooms. And Draco—
He looks at his hand, red and white from how tightly Daphne is squeezing it, and up to Millicent. Her eyes narrow, and her lips thin into a greyish line, and she looks away without a word.
She must have forgiven him, then, right? Daphne, if not Millicent?
Please, please say she has—he can’t deal with Pansy on his own, not for any longer—
Especially not as she squeals like a mandrake root over the Daily Prophet the next morning. Someone managed to get a photo in the midst of all the chaos, of Diggory swooping in to catch Potter, and the angle and the timing worked out just so that Diggory was positioned directly in front of the staff box, and so directly in front of a great winged patronus—one aimed at him, no doubt, mistaking him as a persistent dementor—
That’s the picture on the front of the Daily Prophet: Cedric Diggory, catching Potter mid-fall, glistening white wings unfolding behind him.
Pansy, like practically everyone else in the school, is swooning. Daphne may have forgiven him, but she’s soft, so she’s no use as a buffer. That’s the benefit of being a Hufflepuff, perhaps: a bit of good luck and presto! you’re a hero. Doesn't even matter if it's cliche and camp, with the right angle everyone really believes you are an angel. No one expects a Hufflepuff to have any shortcomings…
But Diggory is, after all, a human being. Sure, he’s top of his class, already in his second year as quidditch captain as a lower NEWT student, prefect, son of a mid-level Ministry employee, and even before his flight to fame was already one of the most well-liked students in the school… Even in Potions, Severus only has words to spite the idolization, not the idol. To Draco, all that means is that his secrets must be bigger, and darker, the type that’ll make readers of the Prophet squirm to read about when he sends a tip to the right—
“Ignore him,” Blaise tells Pansy over dinner. “He’ll be over it as soon as someone else gets the better of him.”
Gets the better of him? Of him? What does any of this have to— Does it? He’s honestly suspicious; shouldn’t everyone be? They’ve all met Potter. Heroes are just a ploy. A fabrication to keep the masses as pliable as sheep. For people like Draco—people like Blaise—it’s an easy illusion to see through, isn’t it? And if Draco can pull down the veil, can control the chaos that such a revelation will unleash to his advantage, shouldn’t he? It would be irresponsible not to be, wouldn’t it?
Sometimes, Draco thinks Blaise ought to have been in Gryffindor. They’ve got all that nonsense about chivalry and doing the right thing, and Blaise? He’s so good at claiming the higher ground. When it comes to Draco, at least. But that’s how Draco knows Blaise is a Slytherin for sure, anyway: he’s got Severus’s gift for prodding right into the tender parts of you.
Or, of Draco, at least. He might even be the only person here who can hurt Draco at all, except Severus. Who can make Draco shut his mouth on his investigation, let Pansy tip the conversation back towards Diggory’s presumed virtues; who can make Draco question his own analysis, all without hardly a word on the matter.
But why Blaise? Why does it have to be Blaise? Anyone else, he could put it aside, but Blaise… He’s a pureblood, his mother is as powerful as Draco’s parents, in her own way—there’s no way to say for certain, but among those who matter it’s rumored that the Zabinis are among the top ten most wealthy families in Europe, at least in terms of families whose heirs aren’t currently fugitives on the run—and it’s only Blaise and his mother, no blood close enough to expect that wealth to spread when Madame Zabini dies. Worse, no one seems to know anything for sure about them; Zabini makes no attempt to hide nor brag of his fortunes and has no qualms being seen associating with even a half-blood like Davis, though her mannerisms irk him. For all anyone can prove, the Zabinis might be as poor as paupers—as poor as Weasleys—their only real influence born out of the mystery they foster. Madame Zabini, Draco's gathered, refused involvement in the war, neutrality afforded by the fear that she could destroy the economy of the entire UK, if she so desired. Someone like that…
Blaise certainly looks the part. Elegant, tall, an aristocratically angular face, slanted dark eyes. A complimentary inversion to Draco’s fair features. A voice, like Severus’s, like Potter’s, that you hear clearly no matter how softly he speaks.
For the rest of the evening, Draco watches Blaise. He's surrounded, now, by everyone Draco might have spent the evening with, were it not for the mounting sum of grievances with each of his peers. How freely Blaise seems to toy with everyone! He’s strangely detached, mediating and aggravating little conflicts with little apparent care for the results, like a cat toying with prey when he’s already eaten dinner. Perhaps, Draco considers, he is just lazy: when challenged to chess he elects another, he rarely instigates conversations or opens his textbooks before someone else has set the stage, perfectly willing to comment on others’ abilities as he holds his own close to the chest. Always twisting words and prodding tiny holes to gaping chasms, never voicing any opinions of his own—if he has any.
What business does someone like that have, speaking words as if he knows Draco can’t help but listen?
He shouldn’t. Malfoys respect power, yes, but power without purpose is meaningless. Dumbledore is powerful, but he is not a pureblood, and thus it has no value. Finch-Fletchey, the mudblood Hufflepuff, claims to have power in the muggle world, but that only makes him the more worthless here. So, say Madame Zabini really could devastate the British Economy—and do so in a way that does not harm herself—and surely Father could do much the same, if he desired to— What would it matter, if there was no purpose to the destruction? Anarchy? Worthless.
Blaise doesn’t seem like he would like anarchy very much. He’s too comfortable with his place in the status quo—he’s been quietly putting down roots, establishing influence. Even, despite the odds, where Draco is concerned.
Draco tries, that night, to write Mother about his concerns, but he knows what she would say. Regardless of personal opinion, every bit of power is of use to a Malfoy. Pureblood, mudblood, even muggle: a Malfoy stops at nothing in furthering the family’s goals. Court the Zabinis’ favor, she would say, but do not grant them any hold over you. That is a privilege reserved for those who have earned your love and respect.
Blaise hasn’t earned that. Why, then, had Draco felt so self-conscious every time Blaise caught him watching from across the common room? Why did he lose his focus, practically preening, the moment Blaise looked at him, only to deflate when he looked away again without even acknowledging the momentary connection? Why did he feel like he had already lost some unknown battle?
It is too difficult to write this. He glances across the dormitory to Blaise’s four-poster, in the opposite corner of the room, curtains long since closed to the light from the lamp here on Draco’s desk. Mother wouldn’t understand. Draco doesn’t. He lights the stationary on fire, banishing the ashes to the common room fireplace, and starts his letter afresh. Mother will have seen the papers, or at least heard of what happened; better to distract her from worrying about how the dementors continue to encroach, how the papers are declaring the Minister incompetent, and share his suspicions regarding Diggory instead.
That doesn’t go much better. Mother tolerates but does not particularly enjoy quidditch talk, so he must limit his description of the match to one paragraph or risk that she does not even reach the crux of the matter, which is to say Diggory’s apparent sainthood among the student body. His quill hovers above the space where he might entreat Mother to understand his position, to perhaps share any gossip she has heard regarding the Diggory family—
And yet: he can’t focus on this either, because as he tries, his eyes drift back towards Blaise’s bed, and his thoughts to what Blaise would say if he knew. He’ll be over it as soon as someone else gets the better of him. What was that even supposed to mean? Does Blaise—does he really think Draco so petty, so prone to flights of fancy and jealousy? Draco knows his concern is an honest questioning of Diggory’s character, and that should be enough—and yet, that Blaise thinks him so shallow—
His quill—a white plume of the manor’s prize peacocks, reserved exclusively for writing home—is flung down in despair, and Draco strips from his school robes, donning his nightwear. Bother all. Clearly, he just needs to sleep on this, let it all blow over… Tomorrow, Diggory will be forgotten, he won’t let Blaise get to him, Pansy will be back to her irritating fawning and Crabbe and Goyle will recall that they owe him and Millicent and Daphne won’t even cross his mind. Tomorrow he’ll write a letter that will delight Mother, and get an engaging response in return; she’ll tell him all about Father’s fruitful endeavors—trusting, of course, that he will understand veiled language, and that he is careful enough with his correspondences to not bury the truth too deeply. Tomorrow, he’ll ask Severus about his chances of getting on the team—it wouldn’t do, of course, for Slytherin to be so humiliated by the Ravenclaws as the Hufflepuffs were, and Father wouldn’t bat an eyelash at equipping the team with far worthier brooms than Potter’s Cleansweep 8—
Tomorrow, if only tomorrow would come! If only he could sleep without tossing and turning, catching himself staring at Blaise’s closed curtains, counting the stitches in the seams of his blankets, his pillowcase, his robes, on and on for what feels like hours—
Suddenly the lights are all on, burning bright, and Draco lets out a hiss, squeezing his eyes shut. “Up,” comes Severus’s familiar voice from the door, heavy with basic compulsion to draw them immediately from sleep, prompting a low groan from Nott’s corner, followed by a yelp as a stinging hex is dispensed his way. “All of you: up. Gather in the common room. Wait for me there.”
“What,” Draco tries to ask, struggling to sit up and open his eyes, but when he manages it Severus is already gone.
Blaise’s head had appeared through a gap in the curtains in the midst of this, and it disappears back inside, a faint rustling emerging. Draco glances at Nott; Nott makes a face and throws his pillow at Goyle, who is too brainless for any compulsion to take hold and still snoring the next bed over, before tearing the duvet from his bed, wrapping it around himself like a robe and stomping from the room. Crabbe saves Goyle from suffocating on the pillow, yanking him out of bed to stumble after Nott, and Blaise, bleary-eyed, emerges in a black dressing robe with ornate silver embroidery.
Not one of them so much as glance Draco’s way as they go.
Perhaps whatever compulsion Severus had cast was stronger than he’d expected. Perhaps they are still all asleep, minds devoid of anything but pursuing Severus’s command.
Or perhaps they just don’t care.
“What’s happened?” Draco asks a minute later, not to any of the first years but to one of the Carrows, one of the second-year girls he has known since he was very young. Mother has cautioned him to keep his relationship with each uncomplicated and cordial, as one might someday make for an advantageous spouse, depending on how the political atmosphere here in the UK shifts. The Carrows were, after all, a much larger family before the war, and their continued freedom betrays a certain level of adaptability to cover more noble ideals.
He’s unsure if these Carrows share their family’s propensity for masks, or if they have been forewarned as Draco has, or if they are simply too tired to read deeper into the situation, but her face remains completely blank as she replies:
“Your… cousin, yes? Sirius Black. He’s broken into the castle.”