Chapter 7
“Mr Malfoy, stay behind.”
The Gryffindors—the ones that tried to form a coalition against Potter back in October, at least—let out the expected jeer, though it cuts off as McGonagall’s attention turns on them. Draco gathers his things, humming vaguely as Pansy says something about lunch, ignoring the suspicious looks he’s been getting from Weasley and Granger for the last week as the rest of their year files out of the room. With Potions canceled until Severus can hold a stirring stick without risking magical fusion, the whole schedule has been shifted, and replacements like this one cram all four houses together in the Transfiguration classroom, which has only been expanded just enough to squeeze them all in. Today was a lecture on the intersections between Potions and Transfiguration, which might've been interesting, only McGonagall is too strict to give them any sort of practical task when she can’t keep a personal eye on them. Admittedly, Flitwick’s lesson had been absolute chaos, but strict lectures are simply less efficient replacements for opening a book. What a waste of time.
Draco knows better than to dawdle, though he doesn’t exactly look forward to time alone with McGonagall as he might with Severus. “You asked for me, Professor?” he says as soon as he can reach her desk.
She flicks her wand, and a roll of parchment unfurls itself into a crisp page that hangs in the air before him. “What is this, Mr Malfoy?”
“My essay from last week.”
“Yes.” She makes an impatient gesture with her wand, nudging the page forward until Draco takes it. “Rewrite it. I expect to see the revision alongside Monday’s assignment.”
He frowns, looking down. There are no red marks, no signs that she has even read the work. “Is there some problem?” he asks. It’s a headache to think back before the greenhouse, but he does: “It was a straightforward prompt.”
“Oh, it would be perfectly adequate work, for a student in his first year in the study of transfiguration,” she says. “Which you, clearly, are not. And if you are going to represent Hogwarts at the Academy this summer, you are not going to write at the level of a child who can only parrot back what he has been told. And if you are going to disregard my warnings about what types of magic are safe for people your age to practice, then the least I can do is ensure you have done the research into exactly what sort of risks you are taking. Rewrite it, with more emphasis on how the animagus transformation affects synoptic channel induration.”
His hand tightens ever so slightly on the parchment, but Draco simply nods. He is used to having expectations shift after the fact. Father says that’s how life is, and if Draco is so bothered by it then he had better strive for perfection before it is demanded of him. Still, it's not as though learning that two absolutely batshit lunatics have used the animagus transformation to escape the law is going to inspire him to do the same. Honestly.
“Is that all?”
“No. In late April, you will be evaluated by a representative from the Academy alongside the prospective applicants getting ready to take their NEWTs. As your performance will reflect on anyone who might petition for a similar opportunity in the future, I will not have you making a poor show. Is that understood? So, you will be joining the Alchemy classes, Tuesdays and Thursdays at five o’clock, starting next week.”
“But that—that’s NEWT-level—”
“And applications to the Academy are not even considered without an ‘E’ on the Transfiguration NEWT. Nor do I allow students into Alchemy without an ‘O’ on the OWL.” She flicks her wand again, and another page zips out of her desk. “This is the syllabus. Acquire the textbook by the holiday, and I expect you to have caught up on the readings by the start of next term. Any questions?”
How on Earth she can expect him to cover six months of materials on his own in three weeks—but he has always been a fast learner, and he is not entirely unread in the field of alchemy. At least one of his ancestors had an interest in the topic and left behind books in the library where Draco spent so many hours as a child. Though none in his family, he is certain, ever achieved the prestige of studying at the Academy. “No, Professor.”
“Good.” She stares at him a moment longer. When she sighs, some of the stiffness drops from her shoulders. “Though I might not approve of the, ah, circumstances granting you this opportunity, Mr Malfoy,” she says, just before he can ask for dismissal, “I have no doubt of your capacity to rise to the occasion. The Headmaster would not approve of such a scheme if he did not see the same worth, and Severus would not have even suggested it without total confidence.”
What is Draco supposed to do with that? If it’s a threat not to fail, it is a strange one. “I will… do my best to surpass your expectations,” he replies, just barely managing to avoid making it sound like a question.
Maybe this is why the Gryffindors never seem to have any sense: they are simply built so differently, what should be simple verbal jousts become full-out warfare that they bravely but fool-heartedly try to navigate. No wonder Sirius Black was estranged from the family.
At least McGonagall waves him off after that, so Draco joins the lunch table only a few minutes late. Everyone, even Blaise, is laughing at something Daphne said, and even Pansy barely notices him sit down. He spoons a serving from the closest dish—green peas—and pushes them idly around his plate. It’s a good thing, that Pansy doesn’t shift attention onto him; he hasn’t quite figured out how to explain the Academy situation. How does one say, I’m being coerced into keeping information from my parents, but it’s okay because Severus worked the situation in my favor, but accepting the bribe means I’m facing more rigorous academic requirements, but it’s not really any different from the standards I’ve been held to for years, but it’s also an entirely unique placement at a prestigious institution that could potentially open doors to bastions of knowledge not one Malfoy in recorded history has had access to before, without actually saying any of that?
One doesn’t, is the answer, so he hasn’t said anything. Still, one might expect their friends would ask—and they are friends, the lot of them, at least according to Potter. Not that Potter has demonstrated himself to be an expert on friendship, but on the other side of the room, he and Longbottom have their heads bent over something, Granger and Weasley leaning across the table, as if magnetized. Even Draco’s looking at him—
The point is, you would think after one of their friends was involved in Sirius Black blowing up the greenhouses, they might ask questions beyond the, You alright, then? Blaise had given the morning after. It’s not like they don’t know he was there. Between Dumbledore explaining why there is now a full-time retinue of four aurors replacing the dementors when the minister has insisted that Black has fled the country and someone leaking photos to the papers of the twisted glass and smoldering plants, there have been enough glances Draco’s way that practically scream they know he was there, but not one of them has actually asked. Shaking Vince and Greg, who seem to have finally realized that Sirius Black was suspected of coming to Hogwarts, has gotten twice as troublesome; Daphne’s eyes have gone as wide as quaffles each time she’s said good morning, like she’s looking at a ghost; Pansy has tried to sit by him in every class, never mind that she’s an absolutely useless partner for everything except Astronomy, but not one of them has—
His thoughts are broken with the arrival of the post. It’s often a less disruptive affair at lunch or dinner time than when swarms of owls descend at breakfast, but that just means the appearance of a perch between the dishes is twice as startling, and when a large brown and white bird swoops down and juts its leg out towards Draco, it takes him a good moment before he startles into untying the envelope. He turns it over in his hands. Draco Lucius Malfoy, it reads in curling, familiar silver ink.
Father has… written to him. Mother writes as often as Draco does, but Father… Mother writes for the both of them, usually. Draco hasn’t heard from her this week, but she’s off on the continent, doing the sort of diplomatic work Father says all those garden parties and teas amount to, so Draco hasn’t written to her, either, and he wouldn’t expect…
But of course, Father would be aware of what happened. As Draco told Dumbledore, Father wouldn’t need to hear anything from Draco. He has probably spoken to Severus, heard all about the advantage the pair of them has taken of the situation, and—unlike Severus, he will waste no time in instructing Draco how to proceed. Surely—
Blaise catches Draco staring at the letter, treating him to much the same expression as Father’s eagle owl treats first Draco’s plate, and then the more appetizing dishes of chicken beside it. Draco shoos the bird and tucks the letter into his pocket, turning himself to slot into the ongoing conversation. Bones gives him a peculiar look as he does, though, in his defense, Draco had barely even registered that Daphne and Millicent had fallen into conversation with Bones and Davis until it was too late to extract himself elegantly. Daphne’s always been the type to give everyone too many chances. She even talks to Nott every once in a while, and despite how it nearly always ends in tears she never seems dissuaded the next time around.
The conversation is nothing serious, at least, so he doesn’t have to truly invest himself in it. Something Bones heard from one of her cousins about Ludo Bagman turning up in Hungary, obliviated within a few brain cells of complete non-functioning. Probably the biggest oddity is that Draco doesn’t even think to call out that Bagman was a Hufflepuff, so how could anyone tell the difference—Bones’ family is evenly split between Hufflepuff and Slytherin, a fact that makes her tetchy—until he’s missed the chance.
Even more alarming, he misses the chance because Pansy—sitting across from Draco—does say it, when he doesn’t. Only she says ‘quidditch player’, not Hufflepuff, which means the conversation goes on with a bit of snickering (at least he’s still pretty—he is still pretty, right?) but without anyone getting insulted. Bizarrely enough, it carries on fluidly, too, moving from Bagman onto Black (and again: they glance, but don’t ask) and to the quiz they have in Divination later, which is supposed to help them determine whether there’s any point in continuing on with the subject next year. In most classes, they won’t have a choice until after they take their OWLs, but Divination, if you’ve not got the aptitude for it, is a complete waste of time.
“Here,” Pansy says suddenly as the conversation moves on, leaning over to snatch up Draco’s plate, tilting it so all the peas roll off to the side. She dishes up a scoop of pasta salad and a piece of chicken—a thigh, like he prefers—skipping right over the potatoes and aubergines to add a few roast carrots instead. “You’ve been looking peaky ever since that business last week—which is perfectly reasonable, after such an ordeal, just—just try to have something to eat, won’t you? Everyone knows a teenage boy won’t be half what he should if his stomach is empty.”
Draco is reminded, suddenly, of when he’d eat with his parents at the manor as a child. Once, he’d demanded to know why his plate was half empty, and Mother, who had never paid much attention to the difference, had called an elf and commanded it bring a plate identical to her own. Then, they had sat at the table for two hours while he cried his way through three slices of aubergine, Mother working her way through a bottle of wine long after Father had declared his blubbering unfitting of a Malfoy and left—it’s the texture, he just can’t stand it. Or, he couldn’t, back then. Now, years after Mother made it the rule he eats everything on his plate without complaint, he… still hates it, but that doesn’t stop him anymore. Regardless of Mother’s rule, the elves still only give him things he likes when he’s alone, and have mastered the art of deceptive plating when he’s with his parents.
And Pansy, like the elves, has plated only things he enjoys. Skipping right over the aubergines.
“Well, don’t just stare at it.” He looks up and finds Pansy glowing with pleasure, sipping at a cup of tea. “Honestly, Draco; we’ve known each other since we were in nappies. If I couldn’t plate your lunch by now, my future as a Lady would hardly be bright.”
Draco, certainly, couldn’t set a plate for her, and he doubts Mother, who not a single person in the country would doubt as a Lady of a noble house, could set a plate for Father precisely to his preferences. That’s what house elves are for, after all. Even so, he takes up his cutlery and makes his way through the plate in careful bites, and by the time what she served him is gone, he’s worked up his appetite enough to take on the peas as well, ignoring both Pansy’s smug smirk and Blaise’s glances of appraisal darting between them. Yes, Pansy will someday make a top-notch lady of some fine house—not Malfoy Manor, of course. Her assessment of the duration of their association had only been a slight exaggeration, after all; Pansy’s mother is the daughter of Madame Schreiber and so the niece of Lady Rosier, which puts her much in the same social circles as Mother, though the Parkinson family is held in much less esteem than either the Malfoys or the Blacks, of course. There is a reason Draco has heard so many of Lady Rosier’s opinions on matters of love, and Pansy’s mother marrying down is at the root of it. And Draco…
Draco won’t disappoint his parents in that way. Whomever he marries, it will be someone his mother can speak about with pride. There’s no question about it. He’s a Malfoy, so there is no reason he would take interest in anyone less than suitable.
Or would he? Halfway through the peas, his stomach drops so suddenly he has to put his spoon down. He’d followed Severus’s lead in following Dumbledore’s plan to keep information from his parents, and Mother hates Severus. If Severus—God only knows how, but if Severus somehow put him in contact with someone his mother was less than pleased about, if Severus showed some sort of approval (a rare thing in and of itself), would Draco even care that his parents, his own blood, disapproved?
The bell rings before Blaise can comment about Draco’s abrupt halt—small mercies—and he stands, leaving the rest of the peas on his plate. He doesn’t comment when he feels Vince and Greg appear near his back, nor sneer out an insult when Granger flounces ahead of him at the door. Potter trails after her, as usual, and his eyes take in Vince’ and Greg’s hulking forms and he stands a little taller and shoots Draco what is probably a warning glance before dismissing the threat of them altogether; Weasley and Longbottom hurry after him, holding a half-whispered argument. At Draco’s side, Pansy says something about Granger’s hair, which Daphne follows up by wistfully tracing through her own fine, straight tail, but Draco can’t bring himself to engage, just leads the way silently in Potter’s wake.
That’s how it’s been, this whole week. He’s felt strange. Off-kilter. Like a marble in a funnel, spinning around and around and coming so close to the spout but instead of dropping through swinging up into weightlessness on the other side. Not just this week—this whole year has been a series of missed marks, like everything that has happened has been a key moment in someone else’s life—
In Potter’s life.
That’s the kick of it, isn’t it? Draco’d found him on the train and Potter’d played him for the fool; he’d tried again and the second rejection had been swift and more public with an unearned air of righteousness. Potter played hero at the flying lesson and victim at the quidditch match, and Draco, grounded, had no part but to watch. Potter had been attacked by dementors Halloween night, Potter had turned Draco’s fun into humiliation at Hogsmeade, Potter had pulled Draco into probably the most dangerous situation of his whole life—and now Draco is being bribed to make light of that and follow the official story. Draco’s part in that story is coincidental: the wrong place at the wrong time.
And Potter had delivered the analysis that cut through the threads holding Draco’s life together. Left him untethered.
He wants nothing more than to open Father’s letter. Wants to let Father’s words ground him, to anchor him in the calm, controlled skin that composes Draco Malfoy—Draco Lucius Malfoy. Even if he has to contort to squeeze himself back in, surely Father can mend such a petty wound. Perhaps it is some sort of delayed shock, as Madame Pomphrey had been concerned about: then let family be his panacea. Let him remember how to feel, how to loath, to weigh down the empty balloon hollowing his chest with just resentment for Potter, for Granger, for Weasley and his rat and Longbottom and his bumbling, for Dumbledore and his conniving, for Pansy and her simpering and Vince and Greg for their lurking, for Daphne asking what flowers Severus would take the least offense to on a get well soon card and Millicent managing to make glad you’re not dead sound like a moralistic judgment and Blaise for suggesting she had better make sure the flowers were viable ingredients and not sign her name either way, for Severus for not telling Draco how he was supposed to navigate these foreign waters and Lupin for walking around looking so shell-shocked and McGonagall making his reward feel like punishment— Surely Father will—
He wants, but he is a Malfoy. He waits.
Afternoon classes slip by in a haze. He’s not the only one dozing through Binns’s lecture on the trade treaty disputes that led to the Something-or-Other Affair as a precursor to the Nth Goblin Rebellion. In Herbology—another class disrupted by the incident in the greenhouses—Professor Sprout has reworked an entire unit to focus on the separation of ingredients classified as having either innate traits accentuated by a brewing process and those which only imbue effects in combination with other ingredients and the application of magic. Today’s lecture might be fascinating if Severus were not sitting in to answer questions of the more potions bent; Draco is fully distracted trying to get a good look at his hands without being found out and assigned detention for being a pest. But when the lecture is done, as Draco has not yet read the letter, and as despite his efforts Severus could not have been ignorant to Draco’s inattention in the lesson, Draco slips out as quickly as he can. In his desperation to avoid his housemates, he nearly runs into the back of Longbottom, who is prattling on in an unusually enthusiastic tone about some plant. Weasley shoots Draco a look that starts dirty and fades to wary before he pulls Longbottom away.
The usual impulse to spit some cutting word barely flickers, which is, in and of itself, perplexing, but Draco doesn’t linger. He loops around, down a side staircase, past the hall where he’s worked out the Hufflepuff common room entrance must by hidden, down another narrow stair tucked away by the kitchen, and is throwing his bag on his bed before his classmates have even figured out their plans for the afternoon, surely. And when he’s alone, at last, he draws the letter out and tears through the envelope, breaking the impression of his father’s wax seal clean in half in his haste. The sheet of fine, cream-colored parchment inside is soft under his fingers as he unfolds and reads—
Sits, and reads again—
Again…
At last, he looks up. There’s not much to look at; no creatures lurking in the windows, nothing out of place from how the dormitory was left this morning. A few voices echo from elsewhere in the dormitories, but none he recognizes.
He glances down again.
Something in his stomach—maybe just habit—itches to take this letter to Severus. But to what end, exactly? What would Severus stand to gain from knowing Father assured Mother that the situation is under control and she can do no one, least of all Draco, any good by cutting her time in Denmark short, or that Father is likewise devoted to his work, and will largely remain in London during the next month due to the ongoing situation at the Ministry, but that he has made certain to secure the full employment of Draco’s tutor during the Spring holiday to ensure that Draco is maintaining academic excellence under Hogwarts’ less rigorous instruction, and that the results of this evaluation will determine whether he will be enlisting another tutor to occupy Draco’s evenings while he is in Germany this summer—what could Severus say that would in any way expand Draco’s understanding about that? Fascinating, Severus will say. What a joy that I will have at least these two short weeks unburdened by the responsibility of preserving the Malfoy bloodline until next winter. Typically Severus, but what else would Draco possibly expect from him?
Besides, Severus has already spoken with Father, so none of this is—
“So?”
The sudden sound startles Draco from his seat. Blaise raises his eyebrows as he leans up against the frame of the doorway, either to block Draco’s exit or to expedite his own—as usual, he’s sent Draco off-kilter before their conversation has even started.
Of course he hadn’t managed to escape Blaise’s notice, leaving as he did.
“Pardon me?” Draco manages to say.
“Good news or bad?” Blaise asks. “Your letter? You were staring at it like it held the secrets of Avalon, at lunch.”
Draco licks his lips, folding the parchment and slipping it back inside the envelope as he speaks. “Neither. Just… news. Nothing terribly exciting.”
“Well, now you’ve got me curious.” Draco tries not to let his chin jerk up as Blaise leaves the doorway, advancing until he’s not three steps away. “Draco Malfoy, deigning to bite his tongue?” Blaise says as he folds his arms over his chest. “I can hardly imagine what would be so scandalous you would keep it all to yourself.”
Draco studies Blaise’s face, his blithe smile, and feels something twist inside him, igniting a spark that catches into a bright firestorm of anger that burns across his face. “Nothing worth being insulted over,” he mutters, standing and reaching for his bag. “My mother is away on the continent. My father’s work with the Board of Governors and Wizengamot continues. Does that satisfy you?” He turns, grabbing for the textbook he had laid out on his desk this morning, which he needs to start on his Defense homework. Lupin, seven months into the year, seems to have finally caught on to the concept of essays.
“Yes, actually.”
It takes a moment for Blaise’s words to register. When Draco looks back to try to figure out what that is supposed to mean, he finds Blaise has sat himself on Crabbe’s bed. The smile’s gone.
“It’s hardly a scandal,” Draco says.
“Right? I think it’s the realest thing I’ve heard you say all year.”
“...I’m sorry?”
Blaise lifts his hand for a moment, only to reach to smooth away a wrinkle in the blanket beneath him. “Do you know why I decided to attend Hogwarts, over all the options I had to stay closer to my mother?”
The anger is still simmering, but this is Blaise. He can’t just… just… “What do you want, Blaise?”
Blaise, of course, ignores his question in kind. “Mamma’s first choice for me was France. But half the students attending Beauxbatons, I grew up with some connection to. If I had gone there, I’d have been surrounded by people who, from the first moment they met me, have been told by their parents to do anything in their power to get on my good side.”
Well, obviously. So too has Draco. “What do you want?” Draco repeats.
Blaise’s fingers clench down into the blanket he had just smoothed. “I want,” he says, “to have a real conversation with Draco Malfoy, provided he would deign to lower himself back down to Earth for five minutes.”
“I’m here! I’m listening. Captive audience. So just tell me—”
“Only insofar as it pertains to what you want.”
“Well, not all of us can go around listening for everything about everyone, some of us—”
“I don’t want to know everything about everyone,” Blaise interrupts. “But I do, as a general rule, want to know about my friends. You saw that letter and your eyes went the size of galleons, and rather than read it, you put it in your bag and—”
He goes on, but his words are lost under the echo of Potter’s the other night. “Friends,” Draco repeats, and his voice sounds far away, even as Blaise’s cuts off. “Is that what we are?”
“No.”
There’s absolutely no hesitation before Blaise says it, but strangely, as Draco fails to hold back a wince, so does Blaise. Even stranger, his face doesn’t smooth back into his usual blank control. “I misspoke,” he says quickly. “I… there are better words to say, ah, uncertainty? Potential, or whatever?” He shrugs. “I was trying to explain… If I had gone to Beauxbatons, that would be one thing, but here, at least, I would—I had hoped, at least, that I would be somewhere that I could stand on equal grounds with my peers.”
He had been deluded, then; Blaise Zabini, even among respectable purebloods, is so far above most of them, he—
“But then I got here and people were—there were people like you.” He pauses, and almost looks unhappy as he amends: “Mostly you. You’re so caught up in being ‘Draco Malfoy’ and everything you think that means, I can’t ever tell what’s real or not. So… you tell me, I guess, Draco. Are we friends?”
Yes, Father’s voice urges him to say. Let him believe in such bonds, and you will benefit from them regardless of the truth. And Mother: When someone of worth extends their hand, don’t let go until there is nothing left for you to take.
Are they friends? There has not been an abundance of people his age in his life thus far. There’s Pansy, of course—as secluded as Draco, really, turned out at their mothers’ events and otherwise kept away with elves or, in her case, the same ancient nanny who had raised Lady Rosier and Madame Schreiber. He’d met Vince and Greg a handful of times before school—but Goyle is thick and Crabbe’s family… as Mother says, his is a particularly low-hanging branch of the Crabbes, useful in business but less than savory in company.
“You're right,” he says slowly, “I don't know… what we are. Is a friend someone who…"
"Who?"
Severus's words fill in—words for Draco’s mother, though she is definitely not his friend. "Can dig their claws into you?" Draco says. "Make you bleed? Because that's what talking to you feels like, you know. Like you're trying to… pry me open. Get a look underneath my skin. It's bones and blood, if you really want to know."
"I… don't know if I…" Blaise's frown deepens, dark eyes narrowing in confusion. "It feels, I suppose, like trying to get through a—a barred door, whenever I’m talking to you—"
"Talking to me!" The hypocrite! "You're the one who just sits there listening and watching and gathering ammunition to fling back at people! You're the one who—”
“Who?”
But Draco shakes his head again. He shouldn't have said that. Not that he's once had control over a conversation with Blaise, but this is taking things to a whole new extreme. "I just don't understand you, sometimes."
Blaise lets out the breath of a laugh. "Oh, the feeling's mutual, don't worry."
"Is that it, then? We accept our, our mutual unintelligibility? Fly our separate ways?"
"Merlin forbid we actually work on a real relationship."
Work…?
Potter’s voice echoes back at him. You won’t be anyone’s friend if you don’t work at it.
Blaise’s rolling eyes find his, and then, suddenly, he’s frowning again. “You,” Blaise says. “You have had… friends before.”
Draco opens his mouth. Shuts it. “I was under the impression that we might be,” he says lowly. “Up until the point you said ‘no’.”
All because Potter said they were—how pathetic is that?
“Well,” Blaise says, his voice uncharacteristically uncertain. “You don’t act like we're friends, most of the time.”
"And how exactly is that?”
“You don’t tell me anything—anything real.” He looks relieved, to be back on a point he’s already made. “You don’t plan or discuss anything, you just make up your mind to do things and expect people to—”
“Well, you don’t ask!” It bursts out of him, and suddenly everything is pouring out: “I’m the one who you all flock to, expecting me to lead the way. I’m the one who thinks of ideas. I’m the one who bothers to say anything, if I have an opinion, and you all just follow behind and then blame me if anything goes wrong!” He watches Blaise open his mouth, and cuts him off before he can intervene. “You all just assume you know me, that I am an open book just because I bother to put my neck out on the line, but if I’m not the one offering, then none of you ever—”
“This whole conversation is only happening because I dared ask you something!” Blaise retorts. “I asked you about that letter and you—you—”
“Why do you even care?” Draco wants to know. “He’s only writing me because of the greenhouse, and none of you even—”
He bites down on the side of his cheek, holding himself back. Fuck. That’s the thing about Blaise; it’s just so bloody—easy—to tell him things. He should know better. Draco’s only half so—so fascinated with him because Blaise is—is in the same vein as his mother, and he should know—he should know just what he’s inviting, showing any vulnerability—
“Professor Snape,” Blaise says slowly, “told us that we were not to pester you with any chatter about… what happened to the greenhouses. That any time we were considering bothering you about it, we were to bring it to him first, and if we didn’t want to bring it to him, then it wasn’t worth saying at all.”
The chime in the common room—the castle bells don’t reach the dungeons—rings out four o’clock, breaking the silence that follows that revelation. “He what?” Draco finally manages to say. “Why would he do that?”
“Ostensibly because he was worried about you, though with Professor Snape…” Blaise trails away. “From what we understand, you nearly saw two Professors get murdered, and then somehow you were the only one on the scene with a chance at saving his hands, which… He’s a brewer. And a wizard. If he lost those…” He pauses. “And then you almost got swarmed with dementors, and I don’t care what legendary bullshit Potter pulled this time, I’ve heard Professor Dumbledore threatened to go to the IWC to try and get the ministry pulled up on human rights abuses for putting them anywhere near innocents…”
“Oh,” Draco says. “Well. Yes, that’s about the lot of it.” He swallows. “I suppose you didn’t need to ask, then.”
“You don’t think anyone’s wanted to?” Blaise replies. “Honestly, if Professor Snape hadn’t put the fear of God into Pansy, making her think even mentioning it was going to send you into some sort of traumatic spiral—”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, come on, Draco. I thought he was being dramatic, but you haven’t been exactly… well, this week—”
“I’m perfectly fine!”
“Are you?” Blaise challenges. “Look, Draco, this is me asking: Are you fine?”
He wants to answer Yes, you arse, of course I’m fine, but it’s a little harder when Blaise is looking him directly in the eyes, and the moment’s pause is enough for Blaise to sigh. “Yeah, I thought not,” he says. “Look. You got that letter this morning and looked about like you were going to faint. I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean that as someone who—who cares, against his… I’m asking because that’s something a friend might do, and…” He reaches up and tugs at the neck of his robes, as if trying to get them to sit straight, only really he’s tugging them out of the perfect way they had sat before. “Draco, what was in that letter? And what exactly happened that got you like—like this?”
Draco hesitates. Only for a moment, but… He’d only said that he wouldn’t go out of his way to tell his parents what had happened. Nothing had been said about answering questions asked by other people. And the fact that that is the only concern holding him back from talking probably says more than he’d like to examine.
God, he just wants to tell someone. And Blaise is asking. And Blaise—yes, Draco should know better, but—
“After the greenhouse,” Draco begins slowly. No, that won’t do. If he’s going to—to give Blaise free information, he’s going to at least have some self-control. “The short of it is that, hm, probably if exactly what happened got out, it would be a nightmare for—” He waves his hand up at Hogwarts vaguely. For pretty much everyone, especially for those fools who care about Sirius Black’s innocence, or who at least want Pettigrew tracked down, but that’s one of those things he probably shouldn’t just say outright.
“And?” Blaise presses.
“And I was offered a, uh, an out, so to speak. From being home enough that it might come up in conversation with my parents.” Blaise’s eyebrows are creeping further and further up his brow, so Draco presses on: “I’ll be spending the summer in Germany, with Severus.”
“...Professor Snape lives in Germany?”
“No, uh—I’ll… I’m being recommended for an internship. At the Alchemist’s Academy.”
Now Blaise’s mouth falls open in earnest surprise. “Let me get this straight,” he says. “Professor Dumbledore—I presume—is pressuring you not to speak to your father by recommending you for an internship at the preeminent research academy in the whole…”
“Yes,” Draco confirms.
“And,” Blaise goes on, “to be clear, you were fully aware it was a bribe, and you took it?”
Draco shrugs. He looks down at his hands, and the letter.
“I was unlikely to spend much time with my parents, except at, ah, events,” he says. “They’ve been working so hard, with the state of international affairs, you know. And I imagine it will be much the same as it would've been, considering that Mother is no stranger to Madame Schreiber’s social circle. I suppose I will be taking breakfast and dinner with Severus rather than my parents, but…"
“And that's… beter?” Blaise sounds doubtful, though he shakes his head. “To be clear,” he says again, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have taken the offer. It’s obvious you are, ah, how can I say it—inclined towards pursuing advanced magics, and if you intend to go into alchemy, I suppose they really made you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“I could,” Draco counters. “There’s just no reason not to.”
“So… You got something valuable to you, essentially for free."
“Aside from nearly getting blown up,” Draco emphasizes, but he has to admit, “yes.”
Admit: what a funny word, in this context. Presumptively, acquiring something for nothing is a rousing success on his part. A fantastic deal. One suiting of a Malfoy.
But the words Blaise doesn’t say echo loud in his ears: then why are you acting so fucking miserable?
Instead, Blaise asks: “And what does your family think of your opportunity? Do they suspect, somehow, that you’ve made this deal with the devil? Is that what’s in that letter?”
“No, they—”
He stops.
This time, Blaise doesn’t press. Which is good, because Draco doesn’t have an answer. If Father hadn’t specifically mentioned Severus taking Draco to Germany, Draco wouldn’t be certain he knew about that. And while Father might have accepted Severus taking Draco without any explanation, Mother certainly wouldn’t, and Severus wouldn’t have lied, especially not without enlisting Draco to uphold it—but not at all, because why would he bother when Draco’s parents will hear about it sooner rather than later?
Suddenly, Draco feels drained. Like if he just let himself fall back, he’d sink into his mattress and sleep for an age. And Blaise is… Blaise is being reasonable about this so far. He doesn’t look like he’s calculating how to use this against Draco, he looks worried, which is frankly upsetting on a face as perfect as his.
And you know what? Yes, maybe he said he’d keep control, but—but if Blaise really wants to know what the letter says that badly—
Blaise gapes—actually gapes—when Draco holds the envelope out to him. “Go on, then,” he says. “You want to know what it says, don’t you?”
Blaise opens his mouth further, shuts in, his brow furrowing, and finally takes the letter, though he works his jaw for several seconds before he actually pulls the parchment out. He reads quickly, but the furrow only digs deeper. Draco can see the moment he finishes, and sees how, just like Draco did, he immediately starts reading it again—
“What is this?” he suddenly asks.
“That’s your question?”
“You almost got caught up in the path of a murderer just last week,” Blaise says. “Excuse me thinking one might expect some words to that extent.”
“Oh, well, Severus talked to Father the night that it happened.” Probably.
“And?”
“And…” Draco peers at Blaise curiously. “And, oh, I don’t know, he confirmed that I am alive, undamaged, and displayed quick thinking and tremendous talent in the field of Transfiguration?”
“Another thing he barely mentioned.” Blaise scowls down at the letter, holding it back out toward Draco. “Which provides some fascinating insight into your whole, deal, but, I don’t know—”
“My whole deal?” Draco echoes. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Blaise pushes the letter toward him a bit more forcefully, and Draco snatches it back. “I mean,” he says, “That I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say anything positive about anyone other than your parents. Or Professor Snape. Correct me if I’m wrong, but—”
“You mean I don’t go around fawning over people like Pansy does? Neither do you, for that—”
“Pansy only ‘fawns’ over her heroes, which means you, most of the time,” Blaise counters. “Which is a whole different conversation, and you don’t even hear her when it happens.”
“I hear her—it’s difficult not to!”
“See?” Blaise shakes his head. “Sometimes I think you don’t like any of us at all.”
That’s enough that the rage rekindles, and fills him with a burst of energy. Draco shoves the letter back into his bag, which he grabs and flings it over his shoulder. This was a mistake. He’s not going to sit here and listen as Blaise—once again—strips him down to the core. “I like you, you git,” he snaps.
“Music to my ears.” Blaise, of course, doesn’t extend Draco the courtesy of letting him leave: he stands as well, making it clear he intends to follow after him. “And also the first I’ve heard about it. You haven’t even tried to insult me until just now, which—well, I presumed you insult people because you haven’t got a clue how to show that you care without being cruel—Look. Look.” He puts his hand out as he steps forward, blocking Draco’s path. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. I think—I didn’t realize how completely… lacking… in opportunities to learn how to do normal friendship your life has been. I just meant that if your Father is your, um, main example of how to talk to people you care about, maybe I can understand a bit better where you’re coming from—Does that make sense? Don’t just snap at me, I’m trying to explain…”
He still looks worried. Maybe this has been another ammunition-gathering mission, and he’s testing exploiting a new weakness—if so, it’s working.
“What are you, some sort of mind healer?” Draco asks.
Blaise huffs another laugh, shaking his head. “I think you mean ‘therapist’, unless you’ve been put under some sort of actual curse,” he says, hand dropping a bit. “But what do you think happens when your mother’s husbands keep dying? People assume you must be traumatized by it, and that you need to talk about your feelings.” He quiets, eyes searching Draco’s face. “It worked out well for me, as I got people to practice my English with. Mother didn’t mind paying to import therapists to wherever we were living so long as they told her I wasn’t about to fall apart, and the people she hired were more than happy to talk about whatever subjects I wished, so long as they were paid. And, yeah. I probably picked up on some of that therapy talk along the way. Maybe some of them actually managed to do some good with me.”
If it is an attack, it is certainly a disarming one. If Draco weren’t so… twisted up, Blaise just handed him a lifetime’s worth of ammunition. Draco’s never spoken to anyone who’s actually seen a—therapist. Father says therapists are good for two types of people: those who have to pay people to listen to them speak, and those who need to reassure the masses of their earnest commitment to reforming after some scandal, and anyone who believes they fall outside of those two groups is deluding themself if they think they’re not being scammed. According to Father, yes, people will go through many ordeals in their lifetimes, but if they are not capable of dealing with life on their own, they’ve brought suffering onto themselves by being weak.
Blaise isn’t weak, and Draco can’t imagine anyone thinking of him that way.
“Well,” Draco finally manages to say. “I don’t appreciate you, ah, taking your experience and… "
But the words die on his lips. Through the doorway comes the last person he wants to see, especially when he’s having an extremely personal conversation, especially when he’s having that conversation with Blaise—
Nott.
They only make eye contact for a moment before Nott’s eyes slide away, and Draco dares think, maybe that’s it. Maybe he’ll retrieve whatever he’s come here for and slink back to whatever dank corner he spends his days in, isolated well away from therest of them.
But then his gaze slides to Blaise’s turned back, and his blankness becomes a scowl. Draco’s hand tenses, his wand nearly bursting from its holster to meet his hand. Blaise, reading his face, glances back over his shoulder—
See, a thing one has to understand about Blaise is that his mother has married seven times, and, as legend would have it, none of the men survived the divorce. In some tellings, she is a gold digger. Some, a serial killer. By others, she is a woman who men have repeatedly thought they could take advantage of, and she is trapped in a curse of forever searching for a man she does not have to kill to finally be respected. Depending on the teller, she is a victim of socially-ingrained beliefs about needing a man or a force of vengeance for her entire gender; Mother, of course, thinks it is less arrogant to recognize her as a powerful witch who has made a name for herself in more ways than a convenient allegory. Regardless: Blaise may seem well enough adjusted, but in not one of the stories does anyone believe that the deaths of those seven men were accidents. For greed or grievance, Madame Zabini is a killer of men.
And the thing about Nott is that his father was counted among the Dark Lord’s ranks, and not a soul tries to hide that, because it drives home the point when they warn their children to stay away from him. A servant of the Dark Lord so vile not one of the others will lift a finger to protect him.
And the fact is singular: Nott junior was seven years old when his mother died. The same age most purebloods of the older customs begin to learn magic. Not that anyone would outright accuse a boy who had barely begun to hone his capacity for magic into something functional, but when it happened, there were whispers. There has to have been some reason Lord Nott had kept her alive for so long. Lord Nott, who has stood in front of a full Wizengamot court and demanded to hear the proof of his guilt, laughing when anyone dared bring forward the testimony of women whose memories had been modified just enough to render their entire accounts inadmissible as evidence, who Pansy’s mother told her in hushed tones to never be alone with, who has inspired Mother to personally engage having little chats with any parents who think their families might benefit from bonds with the scions of the house that quite literally wrote the book on what it means to be a pureblood in the United Kingdom, who is near-universally scorned and yet never denied invitation to any formal gathering—Lord Nott, in some tellings, kept his wife alive long enough to compel her into a bastardization of sacrificial magic for her son. In others, it took him seven years to bore of using her as a hexing golem. The newest rumor, the one that started as mothers began to realize their children would be attending school with his son, is that she was a convenient caretaker for Theo up until the point where he could begin to be taught magic, the point at which Lord Nott used her disposal as a swift introduction of the more personal rearing he would be provided going forward.
Of course, that was nothing but a rumor, and plenty of students at Hogwarts are the children of people actually convicted of even more obscene crimes in the war. Draco, certainly, had higher hopes for Theodore Jr than he did for Vince and Greg; as Father says, not everything he hears at Mother’s side can be taken as anything more than witches’ frivolities. But Nott had come to Hogwarts prepared for war. Not the sort of war the rest of them were prepared for, cautioned by their parents to stand together regardless of how anyone might presume to treat them, but the type of war that pitted him against everyone else. The type of war in which everyone close is an enemy, every bystander a opponent in the making.
Now Nott scoffs at the both of them. “Well, don’t let me break up your little rendezvous,” he sneers, stomping towards his corner.
“Is there a problem, Nott?” Blaise asks coolly. When he stands up so straight like that, he’s the tallest in their year—he even has a few inches on Greg. But Nott, who’s got a shorter, sturdier build, fair skin, blue eyes, and mousy brown hair and couldn’t be more ordinary if he’d been hexed plain, doesn’t look in the slightest bit intimidated. Never does. He’d have made a fair Gryffindor, if being surrounded by mudbloods didn’t cause him to demonstrate exactly what sort of cruel magic his father had taught him and put first them, and then himself out of their misery.
“Oh, no, no problem at all,” Nott mutters. “In fact, if Malfoy’s depraved enough to turn blood traitor, better he stick it in you than breed mutts out of some bitch.”
Blaise grabs Draco before he can whip a curse—any curse—out at Nott, who just rolls his eyes as Draco demands what ground he could possibly stand on to call anyone depraved, and adds, “But as far as I’m concerned, the Malfoys are practically frogs anyways—but one might expect even a pair of animals would be trained enough not to fuck in a shared space. Though I suppose bestiality dulls any civilized decency from even the purest of blood. I wouldn’t know.”
“Let go of me!” Draco demands as Nott disappears back around the corner of the door, trying and failing to pull his wand arm out of Blaise’s grip. “You might be willing to listen to him spit that filth, but I’m—”
“Let it go,” Blaise says. “I’d say I’m sorry my presence brought disgrace on your family, but shame from him is pretty much a gold medal to anyone else. And I’m not any more to blame for his ideas about the world than you are.”
“I’m not—”
“That’s what I’m saying, Draco.”
Draco opens his mouth to argue, but he sees the look in Blaise’s eye and stops. This time, when he pulls back on his arm Blaise lets him go, and though he’d like nothing more than to chase Nott down and show him what happens when you slander decent people, Blaise isn’t going after him. Draco wants, but—
See, the thing about Nott, all the rumore about his father aside, is that he is a bigotted prig. Cantankerous Nott, whether or not he actually wrote the Pure-Blood Directory (Theodore Nott Sr is hardly the first Nott to stand before the enflamed masses and demand proof of what he’s done, after all), is one of the few figures anyone can point to with any certainty demanding that British purebloods use that information to marry only within their own circle. It is, of course, only proper to marry equally pure blood, that’s not the problem—the problem is that the Notts believe anyone who married outside the Sacred Twenty-Eight was knowingly and willingly sullying themselves, their families, and the UK, because who knows what those foreigners have done to pervert their lines. Let them keep to their blood, and us to the twenty-eight we can prove to be truly pure. Anyone who acts otherwise is a traitor.
Blaise’s father was, Draco knows, British—the right sort—but his mother (and the other six husbands she’s gained and lost) is not. Her line is itself old and pure, but that hardly matters to the Notts.
The first morning they shared in the dorms together, Nott had called Blaise’s mother a mongrel whore. That had put a swift end to any judgment Draco might have reserved.
“People like him aren’t worth your breath, Draco,” Blaise says. “Either he’ll fall off the broom up his arse eventually, or he will die in a lonely tower, and the rest of us will drink to his death and then forget about him.”
“He called my family—he called you—”
“I’ve been called far worse than a mutt, by people I might have actually respected.”
“He said—he said we were—”
Draco can’t bring himself to say it, though he’s can feel the flush heating the back of his neck. “Yes, well,” Blaise says, “not that you aren’t pretty, Draco, but I think we had better stay focused on friendship at the moment.” The gears in Draco’s brain grind to a complete halt, but Blaise doesn’t even seem to notice: “Because, Christ, we’ve got a long way to go if…”
He does stop no, and slowly crosses his arms over his chest. Draco’s thoughts are still caught on the trying to make sense of the completely unintelligible word (pretty?) but Blaise’s face has cooled to complete seriousness. “If,” he finally says, “we are going to pursue… friendship, then I need to know if that’s something that you actually want. If you’re willing to sacrifice, oh, your, ah—dignity? defensiveness? whatever—long enough to actually speak with me like a friend would, every now and then.”
Draco’s knees feel strangely weak. He manages not to collapse back onto his bed. “I showed you that letter, didn’t I?”
“And do you regret it?”
He… had, for a moment, there, but—
He isn’t pretty, damn it—Blaise could have at least said ‘handsome’ or ‘smart’ or ‘fit’ or, or—and why—
He shrugs.
“Well, then, maybe you should think about that,” Blaise says. He shifts. “And, for what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision, choosing Germany, if that’s how your father responded to the news.”
Draco, once again, is at a complete loss for how to respond. Draco. He thinks maybe he should be offended on Father’s behalf, but it’s… almost alarming, how gratifying it is to just hear someone say he made the right decision.
And Mother did tell him to try to get into Blaise’s good graces. If—God have mercy—his parents realize that he let himself be convinced to work against them, Blaise thinking it was a good choice is just one more stone paving the long road of honor to the family name.
One other thing Draco discovers: one of Blaise’s most cunning weapons, silence that other people long to fill, can be turned against him as well. And watching composed, elegant Blaise Zabini stumble to find his footing (But the Academy—that’s why Professor McGonagall held you back this morning, isn’t it? You’re ahead of anyone, but… I can—my mother knows some people in Berlin, if…) is almost… Real. That’s the word Blaise used.
“Come on,” Draco finally says. “I’ve got an extra essay to get done, because of all this, so let’s go to the—”
He stops.
Lord, this is going to be difficult.
“Would you like to go to the Library?” he tries again.
For a moment, Blaise just looks at him, mouth still parted from whatever offer he had been making, and then, slowly, the corners twitch back. It’s not quite a smile, but somehow, it’s much more real than any of his charming smirks and grins he keeps on hand most of the time.
“You know what,” Blaise says, “I think I would.”