Harry
Theo waited until the two of them, Pansy, and Daphne were bundled into a carriage to cast a privacy ward. Harry raised his eyebrows.
“Didn’t want to bring it up in front of the others,” Theo said shortly. “Something you need to know.”
“Oh, don’t be ominous about it,” Pansy said.
He shot her a glare. “There’s… some sort of plan, this year, involving a student. I don’t know who and I don’t know the details but…”
“Voldemort’s meddling in Hogwarts,” Harry said grimly. “Again.”
“The last time, you met your tutor,” Daphne said.
“Yes, and then Jules and I were kidnapped, used against our will in a Dark ritual, and Jules was almost killed.”
Daphne grimaced. “Point.”
“You still care for him?” Pansy said. “Really?”
Harry had told them about his fight with Jules—not in any great detail, but enough that he had had to point-blank tell them not to do or say anything to Jules about it, pending how he acted after a few months to cool down.
“We were making progress,” Harry said slowly. “I’m not… if he regrets what he said, then I wouldn’t nix the possibility of… reconciliation. People do dumb shite because of grief and he’d just seen his father murdered. But if he backslides into that blind Gryffindor mold—no.”
“Regardless,” Theo said, “this has the potential to get—complicated.”
They all nod. There has been a terrible track record of misconduct when it comes to professors chosen for political reasons instead of actual teaching. In Harry’s opinion, of Dumbledore, the Ministry, and Voldemort, Voldemort has shown the best staffing decisions, and even that is incredibly dubious. None of them should ever be allowed dominion of a school.
“All we can do is keep an eye out,” Harry said with an internal sigh. “Although the pool of candidates is not particularly large. Someone from a family associated with him, old enough to be of use… actually, I wouldn’t put it past him to press-gang a first year into helping push his agenda, so strike that. Anyone acting strange, anything happening that’s… less explicable than usual, et cetera.”
“Already this seems like such a fun year,” said Pansy.
No one said anything for the rest of the carriage ride.
For his part, Harry was quite looking forward to the welcome feast as a chance to relax somewhat before the inevitable political labyrinth that the Slytherin common room would absolutely be that night. Which of course meant that as soon as he sat down, Draco nudged Daphne up the bench to make room and said, “Have a good lunch soirée, Black?”
“It was diverting,” said Harry, wondering where this was going. Of course Draco knew about it; Blaise had gone to see him about something immediately after, so the question was why would he bother to bring it up.
“So I heard. And did you happen to notice any,” he paused and lowered his voice, “extra interest in Blaise afterwards?”
“Not particularly.” Blaise caught Harry’s eye and gave a minute shake of his head; he was just as in the dark, then.
Draco nodded with exaggerated wisdom. “Well, in that case, you might want to know a certain, er, adolescent lion has big ears.”
Harry sighed and glanced at Daphne. She leaned casually on the table on one hand, but he felt the magic from her other, out of sight, and knew an exceptionally subtle privacy ward had just gone up. “Tell me.”
“He sneaked in and climbed right up into the bloody luggage rack,” Draco said, rolling his eyes, “and thought somehow we wouldn’t notice.”
“That explains why the door wouldn’t close.” Blaise scowled.
Draco smirked at him. “Don’t be put out you didn’t notice, you were a bit busy in Greg’s lap.”
“Bugger off.”
Blaise resorting to a comeback so crude caught them all off guard. He resolutely did not meet anyone’s eye.
“What did he hear?” Harry said.
Draco grimaced. “Not much, but—Greg and Vince are… they’re expecting to hear certain things from me. Wasn’t much I could tone down without, you know.”
“Sounding like a traitor,” Theo said darkly.
“Precisely. At any rate, I hung back, meant to hex him and leave him there—thought it would be hilarious if he woke up halfway back to London—” this did elicit stifled laughter from Daphne and Pansy— “but he’s gotten bloody quick. Blocked the spell, fell off the rack in the process, and still came up with his wand in my face. Good old fashioned standoff.” Draco shrugged. “I said something cryptic and insulting and he left. But…”
“Now he’s going to be extra suspicious of all of us. Fantastic.” Harry glanced at Daphne again and she brought the ward down just as a few professors trickled in. Snape, as dour as ever, visibly furious with the entire concept of large group celebratory feasts. Slughorn, beaming and resplendent in a different velvet robe and waistcoat than what he’d been wearing on the train. Flitwick, who looked at Snape, looked at Slughorn, and pointedly walked away to sit between Sprout and Hooch. McGonagall was absent still, off shepherding the new students, and Dumbledore typically reserved his grand entrance until right before the Sorting.
Harry glanced over towards the Gryffindor table. It was impossible to avoid forever; his usual seat was with his back to the wall, looking across all four House tables to the other side of the Hall. Inevitably his eyes landed on Jules. Who was looking back, face flooded with complicated emotion Harry couldn’t identify from here.
“Anyone know what Slughorn’s like as a professor?” said Harry. “Aside from collecting influential students like some people do hats.”
Draco smirked. “Father says he used to be something. Not much of a duelist, though, or at least it didn’t sound like it—he was a bit, er, sedentary even back then.”
“What if he’s not the Defense professor?”
Pansy’s quiet words brought them all to a halt. Harry blinked a few times. “It’s always Defense—we were hardly going to get Umbridge back...”
“But he could’ve moved another staff member to Defense and had Slughorn teach their subject,” Theo finished. He turned on Draco with an intense look. “Draco. What did your father say he used to teach? Mine never specified, though I’ve heard the name.”
“He… didn’t say,” Draco said, frowning. “I mean, I suppose I don’t know who all his professors were—he’s talked about someone called Merrythought, but I don’t know what her subject was. Kesslare was Herbology… or maybe Potions?”
As one, they turned and stared up at the Head Table.
“Not Herbology,” Pansy said. “The velvet, the luxuries—no way that’s a wizard who likes grubbing in the dirt.”
Blaise sniffed. “I should think not. Astronomy, maybe? Sinistra’s rather quick, she could switch subjects. Oh, or he could teach Charms. You don’t have to be a duellist for that, just good with a wand, and Flitwick’s more than competent enough to take over Defense.”
A rather horrible thought occurred to Harry. “You don’t think—”
There was a sudden drop in noise. Harry turned; Dumbledore had got to his feet, beaming at them and spreading his hands wide. “The very best of evenings to you!” he called, his voice resonating through the Hall, boosted by magic.
“What’s happened to his hand?” hissed Pansy.
She was not the only one who’d noticed. Harry felt his face lapse into shock for a second, and whispers filled the room. Dumbledore’s right hand was as blackened and dry as if he’d stuck it in a furnace. It was way beyond necrosis. It was withered. Unmistakably dead.
“Nothing to worry about,” Dumbledore said, smiling, and shaking out his purple-and-gold sleeves to cover the injury. “Now, to our new students, welcome! To our old students, welcome back! Another year full of magical education awaits you. I must reiterate a few rules—the Forbidden Forest is, as always, forbidden,” Harry rolled his eyes at the recycled joke, “and Mr. Filch, our caretaker, has asked me to say that there is a blanket ban on any joke items bought at the shop called Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.” Harry grinned. “Those wishing to play for their House quidditch teams should give their names to their Heads of House as usual. We are also looking for new quidditch commentators; interested parties should do likewise.
“I am pleased to welcome a new member of staff this year, Professor Slughorn—” Slughorn stood up, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight— “is a former colleague of mine who has agreed to resume his old post of Potions Professor.”
“Potions?” echoed all over the hall as people turned to their neighbors, checking if they’d heard right. Harry, expressionless, sat back, the horrible idea he’d had moments ago confirmed.
“Professor Snape, meanwhile,” said Dumbledore, raising his voice to be heard over the noise, “will be taking the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.”
“No!” said Jules, so loudly that the entire Hall swiveled towards him in unison, though he didn’t so much as twitch, staring up at the staff table with an infuriated expression. The Slytherin table, after a shocked second, burst into applause.
“Bloody idiot,” Daphne grumbled, smile fixed on her face and hands coming gracefully together.
Patil and Brown started whispering to Jules, Patil gripping his shoulder probably harder than it looked.
Snape, Harry saw, hadn’t even stood up. He just raised his glass in the direction of the Slytherin table. A faint expression of triumph could be seen on his face.
Jules turned and said something, still angry, to his friends. Harry resolutely turned away from him.
Dumbledore cleared his throat. Something ominous and portentous hung in the sound; the muttering died off as if stabbed gently in the throat.
“Now, as everybody in this Hall knows, Lord Voldemort and his followers are once more at large and gaining in strength.”
The silence grew taut and strained. Draco heaved a sigh, sat back, and began wordlessly levitating his cutlery, as if this could not be of less interest; it cut through the quiet a bit and made Daphne’s lips twitch up from a frown into a smile, so Harry was glad even if it called attention to them.
“I cannot emphasize strongly enough how dangerous the present situation is,” Dumbledore went on, “and how much care each of us at Hogwarts must take to ensure that we remain safe. The castle’s magical fortifications have been strengthened over the summer, but we must still guard scrupulously against carelessness on the part of any student or member of staff. Many of you may be of interest to Lord Voldemort due to influential family members. Others may be targets of his cruel and short-sighted blood supremacist ideals. He has, in the past, shown a willingness to infiltrate this school through whatever illegal and Dark methods necessary, endangering student lives in the process; he may very well attempt such again.
“I urge you, therefore, to abide by any security restrictions that your professors might impose upon you, however irksome you might find them—in particular, the new curfew restrictions. Should you notice anything strange or suspicious within or outside of the castle, report it to a member of staff immediately. I trust you to conduct yourselves, always, with the utmost regard for your own and others’ safety.”
Dumbledore’s piercing blue eyes swept over them all. Harry occluded and knew his Vipers would all be doing the same. The hall’s gloomy, somber energy grew heavier, settling over them all like a blanket.
Then Dumbledore smiled, and the feeling of weight vanished. Had he been using an enchantment? “But now,” he said, “your beds await, as warm and comfortable as you could possibly wish, and I know that your top priority is to be well-rested for your lessons tomorrow. Let us therefore say goodnight. Pip pip!”
“Merlin, he gets battier every year,” said Pansy over the usual deafening scraping noise of hundreds of students getting to their feet at once.
Harry suppressed a sigh. “Having Snape as Defense prof, though. That’s sure to be interesting.”
“I just hope he doesn’t wind up dead from the curse,” Theo said.
“He’ll just go back to teaching Potions,” Draco said airily. “Loads of people haven’t actually died or gotten injured, or anything. He’s a wicked duelist, though. Can’t wait to see Potter get his arse handed to him.”
“Oh, I’m sure, after he got the drop on you,” Daphnen said.
Draco scowled. “He did not get the drop on me, Greengrass. We drew on each other.”
“Uh huh.”
Draco looked like he wanted to shove her but was entirely too well-bred to do something like that in public.
Harry listened with half an ear to Pansy, Blaise, and Draco talking about the other students, grateful for Daphne and Theo’s silent presence at his shoulders. The five of them were a buffer against the crowd of students flooding out of the Hall and the smaller stream of Slytherins who peel away to vanish down the dungeon steps. He felt somehow removed from them all, from third years chattering about summer homework and seventh years muttering about Slughorn and NEWTs…
Up ahead he saw Graham and Veronica, heads together and clearly plotting. Rio had found a couple kids his own year to walk with and he wasn’t talking but there was no tension to his shoulders, no nervous hunch to his posture. The firsties were out of sight, doubtless being given the tour by Ginny and Finn.
Which reminded him to check on Alex Rowle—Ginny had expected him to resent being overlooked for prefect, and Harry hadn’t heard anything else from her or the fifth year Vipers about it since.
He looked for them as soon as they got to the common room. Everyone would spread out and wait for the first-years to show up, and then the prefects and Snape would do their traditional welcoming talks, and then the firsties would be chivvied off to bed and the real back-to-school event would begin.
Seaton probably still had a bone to pick about last year.
Harry wasn’t looking forward to it.
Picking out the fifth-years, as the students settled down to wait, wasn’t too difficult. Alex was sitting between Evelyn and Natalie, all of them well masked and mostly expressionless save for something hard and set in Alex’s face. That could become an issue, if Alex displaced his resentment onto Finn. For now, Harry would stay neutral, but if it became a problem that affected the Vipers’ cohesion he’d have to step in. This year was going to be complicated enough without infighting.
The entrance to the common room rumbled open again, and this time it was Ginny and Finn with the first-years. Pansy and Draco rose to stand by the hearth with seventh year prefects Emilio Kesslare and Anita. Harry smiled internally to see Viper’s rings on the hands of all but one of the Slytherin prefects. Natalie more than Ginny was the center of the fifth-years’ orbit, and Anita had been nothing but a bit player in the seventh-years’ games before the Vipers. She still largely stayed out of them, per the prefects’ neutrality tradition, but having several seventh-years among his people, including a prefect, was in no way useless.
Eyes wide and solemn, the firsties watched the prefects give their welcome speech. Most of them were credibly well composed; two looked distinctly nervous, and Harry marked their faces for later. Graham and Veronica and Rio could reach out.
Merlin, had he ever been that small?
Snape pulled his same appearing-from-the-shadows trick that he had in Harry’s first year and every year since. Several of the firsties jumped. Theo let out a huff of breath just loud enough to convey amusement, and Harry shifted so his knee bumped into Theo’s, returning the sentiment. The future of our House, Harry thought, watching the newest snakes take it in, my House, in more ways than one.
He hoped they’d do better. Gods knew the Slytherin legacy was stained like Dudley’s oldest shirts.
“You’d think he would change up the speech a bit more,” Daphne said, when it was over and the students broke up into groups. “Seriously. Giving the same lecture year after year can’t be interesting.”
“So you’d rather have Dumbledore, is what you’re saying,” said Blaise.
She made a face. “No, nevermind, you’re right.”
“Say that again, Daphne darling, I don’t think I quite—ow, witch, keep your heels to yourself!”
Daphne retracted her foot, smirking.
“How long do we have to hang around here?” Harry said. He wanted to talk to Sirius on the mirror before bed, and Marcus had left him a note in the journal that probably needed a reply, and the latest financial report from Gringotts needed skimming, and he didn’t especially want to do any of those things out in public.
“Half an hour minimum,” Theo said with sympathy that only their little group could detect. “Can’t tuck and run too early.”
Harry sighed.
Theo was absolutely right, and Harry knew it. It was more important than ever that he be a public face in Slytherin, that he be seen as powerful, respected, in control. Last year had teased out the radical blood purist elements in Slytherin and given them a very long leash. No way was that just going to go away quietly.
It first made itself known among the seventh years, but not Seaton himself, who was more or less the top dog of his year and would be in the House as a whole if not for Harry. Seaton lounged in a cluster of seats not too far from Harry and pretended to pay absolutely no attention as Bletchley got into it with Celesta and Jordan.
Celesta, in the end, sent Bletchley packing with a well-aimed hex on the heels of an insult too low for Harry to hear but that set the students nearest them into a tizzy. By now the second and third years had followed the firsties off to the dorms. The fourth- and fifth-years had spread out around the commons interspersed with NEWT students who wanted to stay out of the crossfire. Everyone in Slytherin with half a mind for the House’s internal politics knew that this year was special and that things had boiled down to two distinct power blocs. Two ideologies. Two visions of the House’s future.
Knowing what was coming didn’t make it any easier, though, when one of Seaton’s friends commented on how some of the firsties didn’t look much like real Slytherins, and Seaton replied, just loudly enough to carry: “Seems like we’ve got a bloody infestation of imposters.”
While looking dead at Harry.
It was not Harry’s imagination that the common room’s ambient noise level dropped a little bit. Time to put on a show.
Theo did an obvious double take, pretending to just notice Seaton’s attention. “I know he’s interesting, Seaton, but you don’t have to stare quite so hard.”
“Reduced to bodyguard?” mocked a witch next to Seaton—Collywode, though Harry forgot her first name. “That’s a new low for the House of Nott.”
“It’s an honor to stand up for my friend,” Theo said, just loftily enough that it could pass for a joke, if you were blind to subtext.
“Hufflepuff,” scoffed Seaton.
Daphne crossed one leg over the other. “Clearly you’ve never met an angry badger.”
“Must we do this?” Blaise said, looking over towards Seaton’s group with utter disdain. “I prefer not to associate with the rabble.”
“And yet there you sit with an upstart little line thief.”
It was the equivalent of a bomb going off. Harry caught himself halfway turned towards Seaton, unsure if he’d actually said that, but—no. He had. Even a few of Seaton’s own… friends… were giving him a shocked side-eye. Line theft was a crime among wizards. It amounted to stealing not only from someone in the present but also generations upon generations of their forebears.
Harry’s mind raced. It was a brash, aggressive play, but brilliant, too, because there were few options left open for response. Of course, Harry could call him out, but by now they had all grown up enough to know that any Gryffindor could fight a duel; Slytherins should win fights with words rather than wands, when it mattered.
“Funny,” he drawled, turning ostentatiously to Theo, “that he’s so concerned with line theft when his family hasn’t got any magic worth stealing.”
“Quite,” Theo agreed; in Harry’s periphery, Daphne tapped her index finger on her knee twice, then shifted it to point towards Seaton: a warning.
“Some of us have a responsibility to the ancient magics,” Seaton said. His words carried. “Some of us know it is our duty to safeguard our birthright from interlopers.”
Harry turned a narrow smile back towards the older boy. “You presume the Black family magic is anything to do with you? It tested me. Found me a worthy son and Heir of the House of Black, not for my blood or my inbred arrogance but for my ability.”
“Magic,” Collywode said, “is not infallible.”
Pansy laughed, loud and sharp in the silence, not her tinkling society laugh but not her natural one either. “You’re saying that the ancient family magics, which neither of you has any right to, is this sacred thing that makes purebloods better, but it’s also dumb enough to be tricked?”
A ripple of amusement went around the House: Harry felt it, tracked it, and smiled. Seaton likewise noticed the tides shifting and leaned forward in his seat, eyes narrow and cruel. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a Slytherin. Blind to the currents of power, soft and weak. And you—” He stood and faced Harry. “You will never be one of us.”
“What ‘us’ would that be, exactly?” said Celesta, with a sneer that dripped disdain. “I’m as pure as can be, and I want no part of an ‘us’ that includes you, Jarred.”
“Ability matters,” someone said, and Harry allowed himself a smile at that, because that expression may have given too much weight to blood status but it was a wedge, one he’d been driving into his House mates’ minds for years.
Seaton scoffed. “What ability matters, in the face of the Dark Lord? You can claim whatever status you like, but when the time comes,” he raked his eyes over the assembled House, finally speaking directly to their audience, “we’ll all see what really matters most.”
He stalked off towards the dorms, with a few of his friends on his heels and others peeling away to melt into the rest of the students.
Harry let out a long, controlled exhale. Tension seeped from the room, and the ambient chatter picked up—little of it explicitly about what had just happened, not in public.
“Merlin, just watching him makes me tired,” Pansy said. “Who has the energy to give a bloody speech this time of night?”
“Absolutely not me,” Blaise sniffed. “I would much rather prepare for classes. We’re sure to have Defense tomorrow—Snape’ll be harsh.”
“Sixth year is silent casting, right?” Daphne said with exaggerated innocence that had them all smirking. Silent casting was new to none of the Vipers—Harry had got everyone working on it last year, even if it was just a silent lumos out of the youngest kids. Magic, in his opinion, relied on belief, and the constant muttering about how hard silent casting was convinced most kids they shouldn’t even bother to try. Not that it wasn’t difficult—mastering a spell silently took at least twice as much practice as getting it with the incantation—but it certainly wasn’t this insurmountable challenge suited only for NEWT students.
Idle chatter about classes carried them through another ten minutes before Harry judged enough time had lapsed for him to make a respectable exit. Seaton had departed with suitable drama and composure that it wasn’t exactly a retreat and he’d left Harry to cope with the stares and whispers of the rest of the House. Not a bad tactic considering he’d been losing their contest.
Crabbe and Goyle were, luckily, nowhere in the dorm. “He’s going to be a problem,” Theo said as soon as the door closed on Blaise’s heels.
Harry cast a privacy charm around the room and an alert ward on the door that would let him know when someone approached it with intent. “Last year made everything—more intense. Before it was just things people would think, or maybe mutter to their friends in private. Now? Everything’s out in the open.”
“He’ll try to force you to duel him,” Draco said.
Blaise nodded. “And he’s sure to keep pecking at your suitability to be the Black heir. Muggle-raised, halfblood…”
“I’ll handle it,” Harry said. His blood ran cool and weary at the thought. What would it take for him to belong?
“We know.” Theo grinned at him. “Think of it this way. You can smack him down and then make him look like an utter idiot when you finally reveal the Parseltongue.”
“Spread rumors about him,” said Draco, who had been staring off into the middle distance since his comment about a duel. “Gossip curses two ways. It helps that you’ve never especially tried to hide your upbringing or blood status.”
“He can try to shame me with it and I’ll carry on as though it doesn’t matter,” Harry said, nodding.
“Which it doesn’t,” Blaise put in.
Draco shrugged. “That’s as may be. Point is, he’ll try to come at you again with that, and you can throw it right back in his face. Catch him off guard.”
“It can’t shame me if I don’t let it,” Harry finished. “Smart. And as for the content of rumors about him… I’m sure we can dig up some dirt somewhere.”
Blaise smiled. “I may be able to help, in that regard. Pure blood is largely a myth, all the old houses have some second- or third-generation magicals in them somewhere, and the House of Zabini has access to… detailed genealogical records. Seaton isn’t that old of a name. I can turn something up.”
“Making such a firm stand against blood purity is—going to draw attention,” Theo said in a low voice.
Three heads swiveled towards him, and found Theo sitting on the edge of his bed, nominally facing Harry but staring fixedly at the floor.
“I know,” Harry said, with caution.
“Just as long as you know,” Theo said.
Harry looked to Draco, eyebrow raised in question.
Draco winced. “I may be asked questions.”
“Answer them,” Harry said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Not about this, anyway.
Blaise managed to pull him aside, a bit later, as all six Slytherin boys were going in and out of the bathroom. “Theo and Draco,” he said, his aristocratic face tight with worry.
“Will be fine,” Harry said firmly. “Compartmentalization, Blaise. You’re a neutral party. There will be… things Theo can’t know, this year, for his own safety. He knows it. We’ll just have to be careful.”
“Right.”
“I trust you,” Harry added. The moment possibly called for a touch of some kind, on the shoulder perhaps, but he couldn’t quite think how and then the opportunity was gone.
“Right,” Blaise said, with more confidence this time. “And I you, you know that.”
“Then trust that I can manage them.”
“I do. I’ll help. Whatever you need,” Blaise said fiercely, gripping Harry’s elbow with none of Harry’s own awkward hangups about touch, the pressure not too firm and gone before Harry could get uncomfortable. “I’m here.”
Harry couldn’t say anything to that, really. His throat felt tight. He settled for a nod instead, and Blaise flashed a quicksilver smile that told him he heard everything Harry wasn’t saying.
When Snape handed out their schedules the next morning, Harry was surprised by none of his new classes. Potions, Ancient Runes, Herbology, History of Magic, Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense.
“I look forward to hearing how you perform under Professor Slughorn,” Snape said to the sixth-years as a whole. His eyes lingered on Harry for a moment before he moved off towards the cluster of fifth-years.
“For Snape, that wasn’t a very subtle threat,” Daphne said. “He must be stressed.”
Blaise peered at her over his coffee. “By what? He’s finally got the job he always wanted.”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe dodging the curse on that position?” Daphne said.
“Can’t wait to see what he does with the classroom, though,” said Draco, which was an unusually tactful deescalation for him. “Anyone want to bet it’s done in all black?”
“We don’t take sucker’s bets,” Theo said. Harry grinned: the classroom was almost definitely going to be gloomy and ominous and sinister and generally the opposite of Lockhart’s colorful, portrait-infested interior design choices.
He’d have to wait to find out for sure, though—there was an Ancient Runes class right away, which drew Harry, Theo, and Pansy away from the other Slytherins. Hermione, Neville, Justin, and Anthony Goldstein were just ahead of them in the stairs, and Neville tugged at Hermione’s sleeve until she paused to wait, although neither she nor Anthony paused their heated conversation about their summer translation assignment.
“Have they been at this long?” Harry asked when they caught up.
“Since halfway through breakfast,” Neville said, shaking his head. “Okay, go now,” he added, nudging Hermione, and she set off up the stairs again, Anthony in tow.
“It’s going to be a lot harder this year. That summer assignment was a beast,” Pansy said, falling in step next to Harry. Neville dropped back to walk side-by-side with Theo, which was comforting, since there weren’t a lot of people Harry trusted at his back in such a cramped space as this spiral staircase.
“Babbling did warn us,” Harry pointed out with a grin.
Pansy elbowed him. “Yes, she did, and not all of us are as good with runes as you are, Mr. Multiple-Subjects-Prodigy.”
“I’m not a prodigy. I’ve worked my arse off in Runes and Potions,” Harry protested. He paused. “If I seem like a prodigy, though, that’s excellent.”
“Justin might disagree.”
“Yes, well, that attitude is the reason he went to Hufflepuff.”
“Literally the only reason as far as I can tell. Have you been encouraging his friendship with Draco, or is that happening in a vacuum?”
“You know me well,” Harry said with a smirk. “Mostly natural. I thought they might get along—they’re both slightly spoiled, raised wealthy, and a lot fussier than they like people to think.” Pansy laughed. “I came up with a few reasons for them to work on things together, a year or so ago, and then it… went from there.”
“Lucius probably doesn’t approve,” Pansy said delicately.
Harry’s mouth firmed. “That is entirely not my problem. Especially considering that he’s indisposed.”
“He won’t be forever.”
“And if I can keep Draco from having to take that Mark, then I’ll have no regrets,” Harry said back, low so Anthony wouldn’t overhear, even though he and Hermione were ten steps ahead and so enthralled with their debate he doubted they’d notice a dancing hippogriff. “Voldemort uses his favorites hard. I’m not going to watch any of you go to prison for a tattoo if I can help it.”
They could say no more, then, because they’d reached the top of the cramped shortcut and come out in the corridor outside Babbling’s classroom, and a few other students were lined up waiting. Pansy caught Harry’s wrist in her hand and squeezed gently. He gave her a small but genuine smile as they joined the queue.
On the hour, the classroom door popped open. Anthony and Hermione carried on their debate as they sat down next to each other in the front row of desks. Harry rolled his eyes fondly at Hermione’s back and took the spot behind her, bracketed by Pansy and Neville, with Theo on Neville’s other side. Padma Patil and Sue Li took the other two spots next to Anthony; Harry greeted them briefly, too busy unpacking his quill, a notebook, ink, and reference texts for small talk. Babbling liked to hit the ground running.
Harry’s hand was cramping by the time they left class; he shook it out, grimacing sympathetically at Neville, who was massaging the base of his right thumb as they walked. “Brutal,” Neville commented. “Gran was surprised I wanted to carry on with this class. Can’t say I blame her, now.”
“What else are you doing for NEWTs?” asked Anthony, who had followed Hermione out of the classroom and somehow wound up walking with them all towards the main staircase.
“Charms, Herbology, Astronomy, History, Defense, Care, and Runes,” Neville rattled off. “You?”
“Charms, Astronomy, Potions, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, History, and, er, Divination,” Anthony said. “Mum was disappointed I didn’t keep on with Defense but it’s really never been my thing.”
“You might be the lucky one,” said Pansy, dimpling at him. Watching her be nice was as disconcerting as always.
“Yeah, I don’t envy you lot.” Anthony shook his head.
“You won’t believe what McGonagall told me this morning,” Neville said gleefully. “Gran told me Charms was a ‘soft option,’ so I wasn’t going to do it, even though I don’t love Transfiguration, but apparently Gran failed her Charms OWL!”
“How?” Hermione gasped, and then clapped a hand over her mouth, which made Theo laugh. “Sorry.”
“Merlin,” Pansy muttered.
“It’s alright,” Neville said, snickering. “I dunno, really, except she’s, er, sort of…”
“Forceful?” Harry supplied drily. Theo laughed again,
“A Gryffindor,” Pansy said, studying her fingernails. Hermione reached back to swat at her shoulder.
“Either works,” Neville said. “And Charms is all about, y’know, finesse and careful wandwork.”
“Whereas Transfiguration you can often force with will alone,” Anthony said, nodding. “Charms might be more useful around a greenhouse, anyway. Everyone needs charms.” They reached the fourth-floor landing, and he checked his watch. “Right, I’d better run, we’ve got History with the ‘puffs this year.”
Hermione waved goodbye as Anthony trotted off down the stairs and turned towards the corridor. “To Defense?”
“We were betting earlier on whether he’s got the classroom all in black,” Theo said.
“No bet,” Neville said instantly.
“I think Babbling is trying to kill us before the winter holidays,” Pansy said mournfully as they turned the corner and came up against a small cluster of Gryffindors waiting outside the Defense classroom. “Fifteen inches’ theory by the end of the week, and a translation, and three chapters of the Gombing book?”
Someone sniggered. Harry looked up, eyes narrowing as he picked out the source of the sound: Ron Weasley, who had glanced back at them from the group of lions and obviously overheard what Pansy said. “We’ll see who’s laughing when Pansy’s NEWTs come back,” Harry said, his tone friendly but his face hard.
“I’ll be surprised if he gets more than two,” Theo said, propping an elbow on Pansy’s shoulder and smirking at the Gryffindors.
Harry did not look at Jules.
“Boys, really? A fight before it’s even lunch?”
Despite her words, Daphne strolled up next to Harry with nothing but threat in her posture. She looked Weasley up and down, visibly dismissed him, and turned instead to Parvati Patil. “Boys are exhausting, aren’t they.”
“They can be,” Patil said, and laughed. The tension eased and Thomas nudged Weasley until he turned away.
“New friends?” Pansy murmured to Daphne as the group of Vipers likewise withdrew.
Daphne shrugged. “We had a bit of a moment last year, during the… incident. She’s sensible.”
Hermione made a huffing sort of sound. “Sensible?”
“More than Brown, at any rate,” Daphne allowed.
“Who’s sensible?” This was Draco, whose hair was uncharacteristically less than perfect and who appeared to be trying to force himself to breathe normally in the manner of someone who wanted to conceal that they’d been running.
“Patil,” Daphne said.
Harry eyed Draco skeptically. Usually he was scrupulously punctual, considered running in the corridors uncouth, and would be horrified to have a Gryffindor see him with his hair falling over his forehead. And yet he’d gotten here a bare minute before—
The door jumped open and hit the stone wall with a smack. Snape waited across the threshold, robes as black and intimidating as ever. “Inside.”
Neville pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as soon as Snape’s back was turned. Draco smirked and Pansy snickered softly, but they all immediately schooled themselves as soon as they got past the door.
It was exactly as dour as Harry had been expecting: drapes had been pulled over all the classroom’s windows, and diagrams had been charmed on the walls showing grisly, explicit pictures of the effects of various curses on the human body. Some of the diagrams were still but the figures in more than half had been spelled to rotate slowly in place, showing the results in all angles; and a few had the autonomous motion of magical portraits, writhing around in pain in black-and-white ink. Harry sort of hoped Snape would cover up the worst of them, like the one of the Blood Eagle Curse, when the younger years were here. He wasn’t one to coddle children but that was just unnecessarily graphic for an eleven-year-old.
“Imagine if a Muggle teacher tacked any of these up in a classroom,” Hermione whispered to him, clearly thinking along the same lines. Harry half-turned towards her to hide his commiserating expression from the front of the classroom and then faced forward again just in time to follow Theo and Draco into their seats.
“I have not asked you to take out your books,” Snape said, closing the door with a bang and striding up the center aisle. Hermione dropped Confronting the Faceless back into her bag and shoved it under her chair with one foot.
Snape paused in front of his desk and turned on the spot, robes flying out around him. His black eyes scanned over the waiting students. This is even more dramatic than him in Potions, Harry thought with an internal grin.
“I expect,” Snape went on, “your fullest attention at every moment in this class. Reading assignments are to be completed as homework. Some of your previous… instructors may have allowed you to fritter away valuable class time on book learning,” this last said with a scathing sneer, “but that will no longer be the case.
“Magics colloquially known as ‘Dark Arts’ are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal.” Snape’s voice was lower now, and the class craned forward to listen; even, Harry noted, the Gryffindors. “Fighting them is like fighting a hydra, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.”
He paused, allowed the silence to stretch, settle, linger.
"Your defenses," said Snape, louder now, making everyone sit up straight, “must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the magics you seek to combat. These pictures” — he gestured around the classroom — “give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse" — he waved a hand toward a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony — "feel the Dementor's Kiss" — a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed, slumped against a wall — "or provoke the aggression of the Inferius" — a bloody mass upon the ground. “Defensive magic is about much more than a simple duel. It combines elements of charms, of transfiguration, even at times wandless disciplines such as herbology or magical creature care. Above all else it requires you to think on your feet and utilise varied sources of knowledge in tandem to defend against novel threats. You will not always find yourself facing something you have read about in a book. You must learn readiness.”
He and Barty must get along great.
“You are, I believe, complete novices in the subject of nonverbal casting?” Snape said with a hint of derision. “What are the advantages of nonverbal casting?”
Hermione’s hand was, as usual, first in the air.
“Miss Granger.”
“In a duel, your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform, which gives you a split-second advantage.”
“An answer quoted almost verbatim from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six,” Snape said. “Correct in essence, yet you will be required to think beyond the class readings to succeed in practical NEWT-level defense.”
Hermione nodded determinedly.
Harry raised his hand.
“Mr. Black.”
“In non-duel scenarios, nonverbal casting allows for a shorter casting time, as you aren’t limited by clumsy seven-syllable incantations that are easy to mispronounce in high-stress environments.”
Snape tilted his head in Harry’s direction. “Indeed. The difference,” he said, addressing the class at large, “between one second and the next can be, in a fight, the difference between life and death. Attend.”
He waved his wand, and a curtain at the front and left of the classroom vanished, revealing a standard dueling target dummy. “Petrificus totalus,” Snape cast. A burst of light flared from his wand and struck the dummy dead center. “And now, nonverbally.”
The spell was cast and done almost faster than Harry’s eye could track. He struggled to keep his face composed; several of the Gryffindors were shocked, even reluctantly impressed.
“Wouldn’t want to have to duel him,” Theo said, barely audible.
Snape turned and leveled a heavy look at them all. “A simple jinx, cast silently, can be as effective as any Dark curse in the short term. It is easy to reverse—most adult wizards know finite incantatem nonverbally—but you will be better served by a spell you know without fail than one you may cast incorrectly under pressure.
“You will now divide up into pairs. One will attempt to jinx the other without speaking. The other will attempt to shield, also without speaking. Use only jinxes listed in the first chapter of Confronting the Faceless as examples of ‘Class Two’, which means? Mr. Thomas.”
“Immediately disabling, but not causing any permanent damage or real pain, which is different from Class One, which are inconvenient but the person hit with one can still cast stuff.”
“I’m pleased that at least some of you remember how to open a book,” Snape said. He waved a hand. “Begin.”
There was an immediate burst of noise as people shoved back their chairs and started talking to each other, choosing partners. “Harry?” Pansy said from behind him. “Mind helping me out? I still can only get the protego silently about half the time.”
“Sure. Pair off with Nev?” Harry said, quietly, to Theo. Neville had never gotten over his fear of Snape and working with a familiar face would soothe him, while working with a Slytherin would render him functionally invisible to Snape’s ire.
Theo nodded, and Harry stepped around the desks to Pansy. Hermione and Draco were, unsurprisingly, working together, which left Daphne to sigh and turn towards the Gryffindors. “Patil?” she called.
“Oh, er—” Patil glanced towards Jules, and then back to Daphne. “Sure.”
Snape waited until they’d all managed to find practice partners to wave his wand and shove all their desks and bags to the edges of the room. Harry and Pansy faced each other and backed up until a good ten feet of space separated them. Finnegan and Thomas were only six feet apart, which made Harry want to roll his eyes; if a Death Eater was that close to you, you were already fucked.
Harry settled on oculus impingo, which was technically a curse mostly because it took more power than something like the Body-Bind jinx, but still counted as Class Two per the book’s rules. He could cast it silently but doing so took more thought than he’d like. Practice would help and it wouldn’t do anything to Pansy other than temporarily blind her and hit her with a wash of dizziness.
True to her words, Pansy managed the protego silently three times out of their first six attempts. “I am really sick of going blind,” she muttered.
“Want to switch?”
“Sure. Just… a second.”
Harry nodded, moving closer to her so they could speak more easily. “You might just be overthinking it. Are you pronouncing the word in your head?”
She grimaced. “I know you taught us not to, but I think so. Bad habits.”
“Keep trying,” he said, “it’ll come. Maybe go for the body-bind now? It’s an easy jinx, that way you can just focus on the silent casting. You’ll definitely be able to tell if you’re saying petrificus totalus in your head or not.”
“All seven syllables of it,” she said with a little smirk.
Snape swept by them. “Well?” he snarled.
“Sorry, sir. We were just discussing our casting methods,” Harry said.
“Demonstrate.”
Harry stepped back, clearing his mind and drawing forth intent to shield. Pansy’s face set as she faced him. They held their wands down at their sides, rather than up in dueler’s position, the way Harry insisted all the Vipers practice.
Her eyes narrowed. Harry could almost see Pansy start to think the incantation and then shake it away. He nodded fractionally, encouraging.
Magic flared. Harry only just shielded in time to deflect the jinx.
“Three points to Slytherin,” Snape said. “Miss Parkinson, if you wish to practice speed drawing your wand, you might perhaps begin with it in a pocket or holster, to train your reaction time.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he moved on, Harry closed with Pansy again, grinning. “Nice one. I saw you stop yourself.”
“Took me a few tries. Let me guess, occlumency helps?”
“Occlumency helps with everything.”
“Oh, look,” Pansy said softly, “Weasley’s turning purple.”
Harry glanced towards the half of the room where most of the Gryffindors had paired off. Weasley, standing across from a visibly bored Jules, was indeed turning colors with the effort of silent casting. “Think he knows he’s allowed to breathe?”
“I’ll go with no.”
Snape finished his first circuit of the room and his eyes landed on Jules and Weasley. “Oh boy,” Harry said, “brace yourself.”
“Pathetic, Weasley,” Snape said. “I may as well replace you with a brick for all the practice you’re giving the Chosen One. Allow me.”
Harry’s eyes barely had time to widen before Snape was lashing out, quick as a striking cobra, some jinx leaving his wand and headed straight for Jules—
Who snapped his wand up and shielded in utter silence.
Snape froze, eyes glittering. The whole class had turned and was now staring.
“It seems,” Snape said, “that you are in need of a bit more practice. Do attempt to keep up.”
Fuck.
Jules looked nervous for the entire second that passed before Snape was casting, one spell after another after another leaving his wand. His feet never moved and he spoke not a word. Each one landed dead center on the shield Jules kept in front of him, braced against the magical backlash that grew worse with each successive spell.
“Those aren’t jinxes,” Pansy hissed softly.
They really weren’t. Harry recognized the bone-brittle curse, a Class Three, maybe Four—immediate pain, long-term damage, irreversible without Healer’s care and a potions regimen.
Jules’ shield faltered and broke. Snape cast again, a jinx this time, with an expression of ugly pleasure.
“PROTEGO!” Jules bellowed.
The shield knocked Snape backwards and into a desk. He slowly drew himself up. For a long moment, he and Jules glared at one another, blackest loathing and fiery rage, a void and a sun.
“A passable effort,” Snape said, like the words hurt him to say. “And yet, against a true Dark wizard, you will struggle. You cannot cast the shield rapidly enough to drop it, cast an offensive spell, and shield again, which means inevitably you will be worn down and when that happens, you will lose.”
“I shielded,” Jules snarled.
“And yet you did so verbally.” Snape turned away, dismissing him, which Harry knew Jules hated; the Gryffindor’s off hand clenched and he appeared to be grinding his teeth. Patil mouthed something at him with a reprimanding expression.
“Well?” Snape barked at the rest of them. The class jumped back into motion again, casting furiously.
Pansy had worked up to getting a silent body-bind three times out of four by the end of the class period. She rolled out her wand hand and wrist as they filed out. “Ugh. At this rate, it won’t be studying that does us in, it’ll be wrist damage.”
“I think I injured something casting that many times in a row,” Neville said, examining his own hand mournfully.
“Soak it in essence of dittany,” Harry said. “Leeches out the toxins, helps swelling, promotes soft tissue healing.”
“Got any on hand?”
Harry smirked. “Always. I’ll bring some to dinner.”
“We meeting up tonight?” Theo said lowly.
“Not tonight. Saturday, maybe; give everyone time to settle in.”
Harry was looking down and digging in his bag for his journal and so ran into Hermione, who’d paused in the middle of the corridor. She pointed: up ahead, one of the younger Gryffindors, Sloper maybe, who’d played Beater last year, had flagged Jules down and passed him a small scroll. Jules read it and took off while Sloper was still talking in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.
“Wonder what that was about,” Draco said.
“Probably nothing good.” Harry frowned after his—Jules and then shook away the grey mood that tended to accompany thoughts of Jules these days. He had Charms next and History first thing after lunch. There was no time to waste thinking about things outside his control.
Draco
Mother sometimes said that a person’s best quality and their worst were usually the same thing in different forms. This was, in Draco’s opinion, absolutely true for Hermione, who was brilliant and focused like a gyrfalcon on the wing, which qualities sometimes meant she was, with actual live people, fucking oblivious.
They’d been working in the library for ages—their Tuesday free period followed immediately by two more hours right after the end of classes. Draco had worked through his Arithmancy problem set, finished Babbling’s translation assignment, and gotten a jump on the essay Flitwick set them about the theoretical principles of the Knitting Charm and how its basic function could be used for things other than knitting. (So far, Draco had discussed rope-making, hair-styling, and, if one could set the charm as a long-term slow-acting enchantment, training plants to grow in certain shapes. He had left out the ideas it gave him about cursing someone’s intestines into a knot.)
It had now been—Draco checked his watch—thirty minutes since he stopped doing anything in particular in favor of doodling knotgrass in the margins of his Herbology book. (Maybe you could invert the Knitting Spell and use it to unweave something like, for example, knotgrass, which was tricky to grow because it ate by knotting itself around some hapless small creature and then growing roots into the thing’s flesh, but then knotted up in itself and was near impossible to untangle and harvest without killing the plant itself.) Hermione had yet to notice that he’d stopped working. She had also ignored all eight of his progressively less subtle attempts to get her to get up and bloody leave.
Honestly, she was brilliant, and her dedication was unmatched. It’s just that it would be nice to spend some time with his girlfriend that didn’t involve her staring fixedly at a book.
Draco sighed internally. Fine. He could be direct. It was crass and uncomfortable, but he could.
“Hermione, come on, it’s been four hours. Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “This decent weather won’t last long.” Decent was a stretch; the Scottish highlands were cold and blustery even at the very beginning of September, but with cloaks and gloves they’d be fine, and there was sun.
“I have to finish this,” she said without looking up.
Draco pushed aside a stack of heavy theory books—oh, no, that was light reading—and squinted at the scroll in front of her, picking out the upside-down letters. “‘Changing Density and Viscosity in Transfi—Hermione, we haven’t even had a class with McGonagall yet.”
“Yes, but she always sets this as the first essay of sixth year, Celesta said so and the older Gryffindors agreed, so I want to get ahead.”
“You’re already ahead,” Draco said, with what he considered admirable patience. “Merlin, if you were any farther ahead you could just sit your NEWTs now.”
She set her quill hand down with a thunk and now she was looking at him, but it was not the result he’d been angling for, because her look was a glare. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Okay, fine, I was being hyperbolic—”
“I couldn’t,” she barrelled on, “because I have to get perfect scores if I want to get into a top Mastery program. I only got an E on my Defense OWL because Snape’s right, I’m too much of a book learner, I have to get better at improvising. That’s what NEWT level is all about. That’s what Masteries are all about.”
“Look, you won’t have any trouble getting a Mastery position,” Draco said, because he hated seeing her this stressed, especially on the godsforsaken second day of term, “you’ll have recommendations from probably every bloody professor in this place and half the Wizengamot besides, considering who your friends are—”
“Like who? You? Somehow I don’t think Lucius Malfoy’s recommendation will carry much weight,” she snapped.
Draco fought back a scowl. This was Hermione, dammit, he wasn’t going to be an arse. He wasn’t.
“Fine, then, Daphne’s parents,” he said. “Or Lord Black. Or Augusta Longbottom, who’s a close friend of Griselda Marchbanks, if you’ll recall.”
“I shouldn’t have to trade on my friends’ connections,” Hermione said coolly. “I should be able to get into a Mastery program without knowing someone important, but I won’t, will I? Being a Muggleborn. You might be able to go wander about doing nothing and take an E on a NEWT or two but I can’t.”
If he didn’t leave right now, Draco was going to say something unforgivably awful. “Fine. I’ll see you whenever you remember that other human beings exist,” he said tightly.
Okay, so he hadn’t completely managed not to be an arse. He thought he’d done alright, considering.
Hermione made a huffing sound and looked back down at her parchment, already scribbling even more intensely than before.
Draco gathered up his things and left with as much dignity and as little drama as possible. He’d be cursed by Merlin himself before he’d let a rumor go ‘round about him and Hermione having a tiff. Bad enough that he could feel a flush climbing his neck and cheeks. Sometimes Draco hated his fair skin for showing every emotion like this: he’d only begun to learn how to force back the reaction, and he completely lost control of it with Hermione or people he—was close to.
In the corridor, he paused, suddenly at a loss. The Slytherin common room would be busy at this time of night with people studying, relaxing, and talking before dinner, and he could think of few things he wanted to do less in that moment than go down and face the other snakes, who’d pick apart every nuance in his expression. It wouldn’t be hard to work out where Draco had spent his afternoon, two dozen people or more would’ve seen him sitting with Hermione, and if Seaton saw Draco’s state and put those pieces together—yeah, best not to think about that. If Seaton had a go at Draco about dating a mudblood, Harry would probably lose it and curse the shite out of him, and then maybe hex Draco for good measure.
No. Harry wouldn’t hex him, not over this.
Draco ground the heel of his hand into his right eye. Over the summer he had started getting headaches located directly behind his brow and eye on the right side; two different Healers had checked and found nothing wrong with his brain or eye, so the problem, they concluded, must be stress. Already he could feel one coming on.
Going down to the Chamber would be nice but he knew the fifth-years were down there testing some exploding nonsense or other for Fred and George, which ruled it right out as a place to pull himself together.
Hopefully the Knights’ Room would be emptier. He really fucking needed somewhere to unwind.
Draco snarled the password at the three armored guardians of the room, since venting his black mood at unfeeling enchanted objects was more acceptable than doing so on a person, and stormed in as soon as they shifted aside. Oh, thank fuck, I’m alo—
“Draco?”
Draco jumped and let out an infuriatingly high-pitched shriek. Justin, head poked up over the back of the armchair he’d been slouched in, burst out laughing. “Merlin, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Wanker,” Draco snapped, hurling himself into a chair near Justin’s. The blush was back and climbing higher up his face, now. Thank fuck no one else had been around to witness that. Especially Daphne and Blaise. Or, Merlin, Pansy. He shoved his bag off his lap. It hit the floor with a thunk and he gave it a baleful look.
“I doubt that bag did anything to you today,” Justin said drily. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.”
“Bullshite.”
Merlin damn Hufflepuffs. “Just… nothing.”
“Alright. If you wanna talk, you can, though. Might help. Sugar quill?”
Mystified, Draco stared at the quill, then at Justin, then very slowly accepted the sweet. “...thanks,” he said, grudgingly, because he may be peeved as hell but he had manners, thank you very much.
“Welcome.” Justin pulled out a second sugar quill from the box, tapped it against Draco’s, and then absently nibbled on the end of it as he went back to the book in his lap.
Draco slid down in his armchair and scowled at the ceiling. The only sounds were the fire in the brazier and the occasional crinkle when Justin turned a page.
“Hermione and I argued,” he said abruptly into the quiet.
Justin closed the book and set it aside, looking utterly unsurprised. Sometimes Draco hated being predictable. “About what?”
“We’d been studying for four bloody hours. I kept hinting at her that it would be nice to leave and she ignored me. So then I finally just came out and said it—”
“Oh, I bet that was painful,” Justin said with a face so straight he had to be making fun.
Draco pointed at him. “It was painful, thanks ever so, and then she just—blew up at me. She was working on a Transfiguration essay that hasn’t even been assigned yet! I just wanted to go for a bloody walk! You know, talk about things that aren’t schoolwork, spend some time with my girlfriend, I don’t think that’s asking a lot!”
“It’s not,” Justin said neutrally. “Asking a lot, I mean. But, er, maybe you could’ve… asked her when you started studying what time she’d be available to go for a walk or something?”
“I don’t want solutions,” Draco said, “I want to complain.”
Justin’s lips twitched. “Alright, sorry. You’re right, that was completely unreasonable of her, do go on.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Draco leaned back and stared at the ceiling some more. “Fine, yes, that would’ve been a good idea, I’ll try it next time, but that doesn’t—you know, then she started going on about how she doesn’t want to ‘capitalize on her friends’ connections’ or whatever to get into a Mastery program, and she just has to get perfect NEWTs because otherwise she won’t get anywhere because she’s a Muggleborn—I just wanted to help! I thought, I don’t know, telling her she’d have the full weight of House bloody Greengrass behind her would make her less worried about landing an apprenticeship, but it just got her more worked up, and then she said, what was it, I have the luxury of wasting my time but she doesn’t.” He paused for breath. “In the interest of fairness I suppose I should tell you I said I’d see her when she remembered actual human beings exist. But in my defense that was at least the fifth nastiest response I thought of. She’d probably have cursed me for the first three.”
“Er. Alright. That’s… I’m sorry,” Justin said, reaching out with one foot to nudge Draco’s shin. “I know she gets pretty intense sometimes but she shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Draco heaved a sigh. “Merlin, I just… I wasn’t asking for a lot, right?”
“You maybe could’ve asked straight up and in advance,” Justin said with a very Slytherin smirk, “but wanting to go for a walk with her’s not a big ask.”
“There’s something you’re not saying,” Draco said, having tilted his head to watch Justin and thus noticing the barely-there hesitation.
“God damn all you snakes, how do you pick up on that shite?” Justin muttered. He fidgeted with the sugar quill. “Alright, so, look, I grew up rich, right? You knew that.”
“Yes.”
“So for Muggles, competitive horseback riding is usually kind of expensive, and it’s mostly a rich people thing, especially here in England. And one time I made a complete arse of myself because I hadn’t ever thought about how much it cost relative to a working-class Muggle income and someone called me out on it and it was kind of awful and Mum sat me down for a lecture about privilege. It basically boiled down to, you know, I didn’t have to be ashamed of having money, but it did mean it was on me to be aware of the shite I took for granted that other people couldn’t even think about. It’s not just stupid stuff like what sport you can do, it’s also what schools you can go to, whether you know someone in a top law or finance firm, whether getting picked up by the coppers for some minor thing can be dealt with or not… whatever. The point is it was my problem to pay attention and figure that shite out and not be a right prat about it—it wasn’t other kids’ jobs to come along and tell me what I was wrong about.”
“And you think I’m unaware of the problems you and Hermione face as Muggleborns,” said Draco, because he was perfectly capable of working out the analogy Justin was drawing here.
“Yeah, kind of. You’re better than you used to be—”
“That’s your fault.” Draco frowned. “Or your… because of you, I mean.”
“You’re welcome.” Justin winked at him. “So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is Hermione’s right to be anxious about that stuff. My parents have plenty of money and they’re happy to pay for it if I get into a Mastery somewhere or support me if I do a work-study with a wizard financier or give me seed money for a business in our world. Hermione doesn’t have that. And she’s really principled—you know that about her.”
“It’d be hard to miss.”
“So she’s being closed off because she’s maybe more anxious than she should be although the base reasons for it are totally valid. And then you’re kind of oblivious sometimes to why she feels so much pressure and she snaps at you about it and then you snap back because if you were an animagus I just bet you’d be a hedgehog.”
Draco’s face screwed up with disgust. “I would not.”
“Okay, so probably not. A peacock, maybe.”
Draco threw a pillow at him, which Justin swatted out of the air, laughing. “And you’d be a—a—yeah, shut the fuck up,” because Justin was laughing harder now, “I just spent ages studying, I feel like my brain’s about to start leaking out of my ears.”
“It’s not my fault you have the emotional intelligence of the average goldfish.”
“I hate you.”
“Liar.” Justin kicked at his shin again. “C’mon, it’ll be fine. You just go find her later and apologize for being an idiot. Get Daph to talk her down first, maybe, she listens to Daphne. Then once they’ve settled the anxiety some you can talk it out, and hopefully by then she’ll admit she could’ve handled it better, and you just ask her to make an effort to spend time with you that isn’t studying, and you promise to be more up front next time.”
“How are you single?” Draco demanded. “You’ve got this whole fucking thing just… completely aced, alright, it’s like someone gave you a cheat sheat for dating.”
Justin shrugged easily. “Dunno. Haven’t gotten any interest from the right type of person, I guess.”
“Then our classmates are idiots,” Draco said flatly. He pressed his fingers against his right eyebrow; the headache was still there, but it hadn’t gotten any worse at least, pulsing dully in time with his heartbeat. “Got any headache reliever?”
“Er, I think Harry keeps some over… here…” Justin went to the cabinet against the wall (propped up by a stone taken from a loose wall a few rooms over, since it had been missing a leg when they found it) where Harry kept a stock of basic potions. He rummaged around for a moment and came out with a slightly dusty glass vial. “Eureka!”
“The fuck?”
“Muggle expression.”
“Muggles are bloody weird,” Draco grumbled, holding out a hand for the potion, and then paused. “Dammit, that’s the sort of thing you mean, isn’t it?”
Justin grinned and slapped the vial into his palm. “Little bit, yeah. I know you’re mostly joking and that you also do think Muggles are weird. Just like Muggles think other Muggles from other cultures are weird. No one can understand everyone everywhere.”
“Do go on, O fount of wisdom,” Draco deadpanned. He knew he was making a joke out of it due to discomfort, and he knew Justin knew what he was doing, but that didn’t at all mean he could stop.
“Drink your potion, that’s my wisdom,” Justin said. “And then if you ask nicely I’ll get the elves to send some food up so we can eat here and avoid the Great Hall.”
“And Father says Hufflepuffs are useless,” Draco said smugly, and then yelped when Justin smacked him on the head. “Alright, alright, sorry, yes, Hufflepuffs are the best and you’re the best of the Hufflepuffs, are you happy?”
“You’re on thin fucking ice,” Justin threatened. “Watch it or they’ll serve you last so the soup course has gone cold.”
Draco snorted. “Mother has the elves do that to guests she doesn’t like. She knows they won’t complain for fear of offending the elves, because no one wants to deal with an offended house-elf, so they just have to suck it up.”
“I am never ever letting Mum get her hands on a house-elf,” Justin said fervently. “Her social circle one hundred percent wouldn’t survive it.”
“Why do you think we all have elves? It’s so no one has an unfair advantage.”
“Muggles just have to make do with very well-paid staff. Never underestimate the power of a loyal housekeeper,” Justin said sagely. “You never know what guests will leave in their rooms when they stay over.”
“Gross.”