A Thousand Words

Chapter 13: Backwards Glances

Draco had hoped to make a quick exit once he showed Dawlish the scrap of paper he had found. Unfortunately, Anna had apparently not forgotten about their lunch date. The moment Draco walked out of the shop and into the late morning sun, she pounced on him.

'I was thinking that we could go to The Leaky Cauldron to grab a quick lunch,' she said cheerfully, jumping straight to the point.

'Right,' replied Draco uncomfortably. He had forgotten about his promise while he was working, and now it dawned upon him that if he wanted to ditch her and go home to mull over the case, he would have to come up with a plausible excuse. What have I got myself into? he thought crossly.

'How did the investigation go?'

'What?' Draco muttered absent-mindedly, for he had just glanced over his shoulder and seen Hermione leaving Madam Malkin's. This surprised him, for he thought she would certainly have stayed into the afternoon.

'How did the investigation go?' Anna repeated. She gave Draco's arm, which she was still clutching, a little shake as if to remind him that she was still there and waiting for him to dote upon her.

'Very well, thanks,' replied Draco. He cast a fleeting look behind him again. Hermione was nowhere to be seen.

I wonder where she went, he thought, surprised - in the split second he had looked away, Hermione had disappeared without a trace.

'Mr Malfoy?'

'Call me Draco,' said Draco automatically. He winced, immediately realising how easy it was for those words to be taken the wrong way.

Anna, it appeared, did indeed mistake Draco's words for something more than an act of courtesy, for her lips curled into a satisfied smile. 'Well then, Draco, did you find anything new this morning?'

'A few things here and there,' said Draco indifferently. As he did not know anything about the girl other than her name, he felt strongly that it would be unwise to tell her more than she needed to know.

'Such as?' Anna prompted. Before Draco could respond, she shook her head and said quickly, 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be nosy.'

Draco shrugged.

'It's just that all of this is so horrible, especially considering my presence at the scene of the crime...it's quite disturbing, knowing my mother and I could have been walking with a murderer in the middle of the night...' Anna gave an affected shudder and looked mournfully up at Draco.

Draco felt a twinge of annoyance. He had a strong suspicion that Anna's lamenting was nothing more than an act, and he did not enjoy the fact that he was the target audience.

'Let's just go eat,' he said tersely.

The Leaky Cauldron was bustling with activity when Draco and Anna entered through the back entrance. Since the demise of Voldemort and his followers, families had been eager to get out and enjoy the fact that they could go anywhere they desired without having to fear a Death Eater attack. Today, however, the atmosphere in the pub was slightly more subdued than usual due to the nearby appearance of the Dark Mark.

'Tom,' said Draco shortly with a nod as he passed the old, hunched bartender.

'G'day, Mr Malfoy,' Tom croaked back. He gave the counter before him a quick swipe, and added with a toothless grin, 'Who's your friend?'

'This is Anna,' replied Draco, trying his best to sound uninterested. He didn't want to relay any more mixed signals to her. 'She's a witness in the Malkin case, and I brought her along for lunch.'

'Nice to meet you,' said Anna, smiling uncertainly at Tom.

Tom grunted in response and returned to scrubbing the counter.

Draco and Anna weaved their way through the crowd, pausing once so that Anna could exchange a quick word with a group of middle-aged women who, Anna later said, were friends of her mother's. Once they located a suitable table for two in the middle of the busy dining room, they settled down and waited for a waitress to bring them menus.

'So,' said Anna brightly, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them, 'tell me a bit about yourself. My mother often tells me that I ought not to dine with someone until I've got to know their background.'

Draco raised an eyebrow. 'We're not really supposed to divulge personal information to our clients.'

'I'm not really a client, though, am I?' said Anna teasingly, leaning forward. 'I'm just someone who happened to be present when someone was...' she trailed off, wincing, then cleared her throat and switched direction. 'Oh, come on, it doesn't have to be that personal. I'd just like to get to know you better.'

She's good looking, a voice in the back of Draco's mind encouraged. Just go along with it for now...

'There's not much about me you'd care to know,' Draco said dispassionately. He looked away pointedly, hoping to end the conversation there.

Anna, however, seemed determined to pursue the topic. 'What's your job like?'

'It's busy,' said Draco with a shrug.

'Are you an Auror?' Anna asked, her eyes widening as if she were awestruck at the very thought.

'No. I'm a Hit Wizard.'

'Wow,' Anna gushed, 'you must be really brave, then.'

'Not particularly,' Draco replied irritably. Anna's chirpy personality was beginning to grate upon his nerves. 'It doesn't require much courage to cast a stunning spell,' he added, rubbing one of his scars absent-mindedly.

Anna laughed but stopped abruptly. For a moment, she seemed to struggle with herself as if she wanted to say something but couldn't quite bring herself to. Draco glanced at her curiously, wondering what was on her mind.

Finally, Anna blurted out, 'Where did you get your scars?' She quickly looked down abashedly.

Draco went rigid. He could not remember the last time anyone had asked him that question. Yes, he frequently saw the curiosity and fear in the eyes of those he passed by, but there weren't many people bold enough to voice their thoughts. A chill ran down his spine as he tried to push back the memories of the night he received the scars that were now trickling slowly into his consciousness.

'I'm sorry, the question was too personal, wasn't it?'

'Yes, it was too personal,' Draco snapped. Almost immediately, he realised how harsh his voice sounded, so to cover this up, he let his hand fall away from his face and clenched it tightly under the table, mentally steeling himself.

Anna looked taken aback by Draco's tone of voice. For a split second, defensiveness flitted across her dark features; then, her apologetic smile was fixed back in place. 'I shouldn't have asked you that. Of course not. What was I thinking? I'm sure it's not something you discuss a lot,' she added with a nervous laugh.

Draco exhaled sharply, saying nothing. Now, more than ever, he wanted to get the date over with. He thought briefly of the dark comfort of his basement, and his desire to leave grew even stronger. 'No...' he said through clenched teeth, 'no, it's not a topic that comes up in my conversations on a regular basis...'

'I'm sorry,' said Anna again. She reached up and fiddled anxiously with a strand of her hair. 'I usually don't think before I open my mouth. I'd just...well...let's just rewind a few minutes, okay?'

Draco smiled tightly. 'Since I've got you here,' he said stiffly, 'can I ask you a few more questions about what you saw the night before?'

Anna seemed disappointed as she replied, 'Oh, but I thought we could just enjoy a nice afternoon here away from all of -'

'Look,' Draco interrupted, trying to sound as polite as possible, 'Anna, you're a really nice young woman, and you've helped us a lot in this case. I appreciate all the information you've given me so far. However, I don't know you very well, and I'm not looking to get involved with anyone at the moment, so -'

'Involved?' Anna repeated. She furrowed her brow, and then seemed to fully process Draco's words. 'Oh no, I didn't mean this to be a romantic date! I just want to be friends. For now, at least,' she added.

'Oh.' Draco frowned, now feeling rather stupid for assuming so much. Annoyed at himself, he raised a hand, looked around, and called out loudly, 'We'd like to order, now.'

A young couple sitting at the table looked over at him, their eyes narrowed as if his raised voice had interrupted them in the middle of an important conversation. Draco raised an eyebrow stonily at them before turning back around to face Anna.

'So Anna,' he said, barely suppressing a sigh, 'is there anything else about the murder you haven't told me yet?'

---

Upon arriving back home later that afternoon, Draco barely had time to shrug off his cloak before a Ministry owl flew in through the open window, landed on the back of a chair, and held out its leg, to which a scroll of paper tied hastily with a piece of string was attached, towards him. Cursing loudly, Draco snatched the note and tried to detach it from the owl's leg. Alarmed by Draco's rough movements, the owl flapped its wings frantically, taking off the moment it was free with a loud hoot.

Mr Malfoy,

I wasn't sure if you were at home, so I decided to send this by owl. Mr Shacklebolt wants me to let you know that you're to join the rest of the guards accompanying the students at Hogwarts to the train station tomorrow at 4pm. There was another werewolf attack near Hogsmeade, and the Headmistress thinks

Draco stopped reading there. He didn't care what McGonagall thought. Of course Kingsley would make him follow little kids around the moment he found a lead on his current case. Draco growled under his breath, but was able to suppress his aggravation as he tossed his cloak carelessly onto his shabby sofa and headed towards his basement.

'Lydig,' he yelled as he entered the dark hallway, 'have the owl fed and my dinner ready in two hours!' Draco was not particularly hungry, as Anna had insisted on him trying half the menu at The Leaky Cauldron before dragging him off to take a walk down the busy streets of Diagon Alley (the worst part of it was that he didn't even manage to squeeze any new information about the case out of her), but dinner every night was a custom he was used to by now and did not care to break.

As Draco stepped onto the stairway leading down to his potions room, he heard a faint hissing. A smile of satisfaction broke his features; his decision to add syrup of hellebore to the Wolfsbane II Potion, the effects of which had taken a week to settle in, was another jump towards his ultimate goal. He had realised that the hellebore would help to purge the dark magic associated with lycanthropy from the body, and, looking down at the now-pale grey potion-in-progress, he was pleased to find that his hunch had been correct.

However, this left Draco facing a dead end. The hellebore would make the permanent removal of any traces of wolf-like symptoms easier, but that still left the problem of figuring out how and in which order to add the remaining ingredients necessary to making this eradication work.

'Severus, you could have left me more to work with here,' Draco muttered as he flipped through his mentor's old copy of Advanced Potion-Making, as if searching for some answer hidden between the fading lines of the textbook. His mind briefly flashed back to his sixth year when Harry Potter had, to his indignation, thwarted him at Potions upon receiving this book by chance. He almost chuckled at this, but his mood was quickly dampened by the memory of what that year stood for in his past.

It had been a long time since Draco had reflected upon his years in Hogwarts, but now an image of his sixteen-year old self, pale and sickly, floated into his mind. He frowned as he stared down at his wavering reflection on the simmering surface of the potion beside him. What happened to me? he wondered. What had caused him to turn to darkness, and then back away from that once he'd caught a glimmer of a different kind of life?

It had been over a year since he made his reappearance in the wizarding world, Draco realised. He could recall the night he decided to step out of hiding quite clearly. It was November 27, 2001, and it had been dark, cold, and pouring rain. Most people had retired to bed by then, but Draco chose to enter the Ministry anyway, hoping someone would be there to take him in. He had no doubt that his sopping wet, dirty, mangled appearance had given many late-night workers a fright. Incidentally, Potter had been the one who let Draco into his office and gave him a towel. Yet even though word spread quickly that the former Death Eater had Harry Potter's trust, in the days that followed, Draco had sensed everyone's distrust. Now, a year later on December 17, 2002, Draco knew that he still had yet to earn the faith of almost everyone else in the Ministry.

Suddenly, Draco was gripped with the desire to write to Starlight. It was so strong an urge that, without thinking, he slammed Advanced Potion-Making shut, turned, and stalked out of the room. Just before he closed the door, he remembered that the fire beneath the cauldron was still burning, and quickly put it out with a well-aimed spell.

Back upstairs, Draco blinked several times, trying to adjust to the darkness. He rarely turned on the lights (in fact, he didn't even know if the lights still worked, and if they didn't, he wouldn't be able to fix them, as he wasn't very proficient when it came to Muggle gadgets), and usually relied on his house-elf to light the sparse candles in the hallway. Today, however, Lydig had apparently forgotten to do so; so, after muttering about useless servants for a few seconds, Draco said, 'Incendio!' and lit a few of the nearby candles with his wand.

At that very moment, Lydig hurried into Draco's sight, his spindly fingers clutching the tattered black cloth he wore. 'Master,' he squeaked, bowing deeply. 'Lydig did not expect Master to be finished so soon - he has not yet prepared dinner -'

'There'll be no need for that, Lydig,' said Draco shortly, cutting off the house-elf. He opened his mouth to berate Lydig for not lighting the candles, then thought the better of it and instead said, 'Bring it up to my study later.'

Lydig seemed immensely relieved to be exempt from any sort of punishment, so without another word, he bustled off back into the room he had just come out of.

Upstairs, Draco lit a few more candles, this time the ones on his desk. As he sat down and began to search through the drawers - which he usually kept neat and organised - for a loose sheet of parchment, his hand knocked against something cold and hard. Curious, Draco pushed aside a crumpled letter from Dawlish to find his personal ink bottle. With a slight smile, Draco picked it up and held it to the glow emanating from the candles. The flickering light of the flames caused the crystal, into which a four-pointed star was engraved, to sparkle.

For one wild, fleeting moment, Draco almost thought he saw the outline of a smiling girl in the dancing reddish-orange lights being reflected on the crystal. Then, he shook his head. He put the bottle down, a wry smile snaking across his lips. Quietly, he murmured to himself, 'Starlight.'