The Corresponding Emotion

The next morning, Ron woke up feeling almost rejuvenated. Something about the dream he'd had the night before was reassuring, in a way, and even though he felt slightly hung over from the night before, he hummed his way cheerfully through his morning shower. He didn't care at all whether or not he woke Malfoy, who was apparently sleeping like a dead man and had not stirred since Ron woke up.

After his shower, he dug around in his bag for his toothbrush, when he felt something unfamiliar in the very bottom of the bag. It took some work to untangle it from a loose piece of the backpack lining, but when he worked it free, he nearly dropped it in shock.

It was a necklace.

But not just an ordinary necklace. It was a necklace like nothing Ron had ever seen before; thick, silvery links (platinum, maybe?), encrusted with so many diamonds that they were nearly blinding as they reflected the lights from the bathroom mirror. It obviously had some sort of magical properties as well, as Ron could feel a slight but distinct crackle of magic against his fingertips as he held it up to inspect it more closely. There appeared to be an inscription on the back, across the top edge of the links: Redloheb eht fo eye eht ni si ytuaeb.

It took Ron a moment to figure it out, thinking back to a dusty mirror in a long-disused room of Hogwarts, where two young boys stood and saw what they wanted more than anything in the world. He realised that what he held in his hand was probably the most expensive thing he would ever touch, and somehow it wasn't a very pleasant realisation.

It was quickly replaced by the realisation that this was why Malfoy had been following him around ever since they had landed in Charlotte. Malfoy had not only planted a box of dirt in his bag, he'd planted this necklace. To avoid Customs, most likely, but why? And why had he chosen Ron to plant it on? Ron didn't think Malfoy was up to any kind of Dark magic or activity; if he had been, he would have simply taken care of Ron a long time ago with an unexpected Stunning Spell and had plenty of opportunity to search for the necklace. But he hadn't, and Ron was damned if he couldn't figure out why.

Part of him was furious that Malfoy was only following him around to try to get his necklace back, and wanted to go out and confront him immediately. But another, sneakier part of him wanted to wait and see how long it took Malfoy to give up on finding the necklace. Besides, Ron needed a ride to the coast, and if he could get it out of Malfoy, so much the better. And yet another, nosier part of him was more than a little intrigued about Malfoy's plans, and he wanted to find out for himself what they were. The last few days had taught him that this Draco Malfoy was much more unpredictable than the Draco Malfoy he had gone to school with.

Harry Potter was apparently not the only person changed by the war.

Ron carefully tucked the necklace into an inside pocket of his jacket, fastened it, and went downstairs to have breakfast without waking Malfoy.

"You could have woken me for breakfast, you know," Malfoy grumbled. He frowned at the styrofoam cup of coffee sitting in the cupholder; he'd taken one swallow of it, nearly choked, and ignored it for the last half an hour.

"Nah, I figured you could have used a little more beauty rest," said Ron, adjusting his seat belt. "You don't look like you slept very well last night."

Malfoy grunted non-commitally, keeping his eyes on the road. When Ron had returned from breakfast, Malfoy had still been asleep, and looked like he wasn't planning on waking anytime soon, so Ron had been forced to shake him awake so they could get on the road and be in Hilton Head before dark.

"Since when did you get to be a morning person?" Malfoy snapped.

"Ooh, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Ron said cheerfully. He had a pretty good idea of why Malfoy was so grumpy, and it had everything to do with that necklace hidden away in his inside jacket pocket. He was going to thoroughly enjoy every minute of watching Malfoy try to squirm his way out of this situation. "Rough night?"

"You could say that," Malfoy grumbled, and was quiet for a long time.

Ron looked out the window and tried not to laugh.

"Why are we stopping?" asked Ron.

"The car needs gas, you idiot," snapped Malfoy. "Get out, you're pumping."

"What? Pumping gas?" Ron had no idea what Malfoy was talking about.

Malfoy made a face that on any other person would have looked frustrated, but on Malfoy it looked slightly constipated. "Petrol. God. Just get out - I'll show you."

"How come you know about all this Muggle stuff?" Ron asked, getting out of the car and following Malfoy around to the back. "You hate Muggles."

"When in Rome," was all that Malfoy would say, before he pointed Ron to the pumps and explained everything in a very surly tone. Ron didn't see what the big deal was, other than perhaps it was a little smelly, so he didn't mind at all when Malfoy told him to fill up the car and he would go inside and pay for it. And Ron figured that Malfoy must be feeling pretty horrid this morning if he didn't take the opportunity to needle Ron about money.

Malfoy had only made it a few steps away before he exploded in a litany of swear words that Hermione would have hexed Ron sideways for using in her hearing. He jumped up and down, yelling and screaming and cursing everyone from Salazar Slytherin to Elric the Ugly at the top of his lungs, and Ron yanked the nozzle from the car and sprinted over to him.

"Malfoy?"

"BUGGER BLEEDING FUCKING HELL!" Malfoy shrieked, along with a host of other words that Ron didn't think a wizard of Malfoy's inbreeding would have ever heard before. "SOMETHING FUCKING BIT ME!"

Ron's first thought was spiders, but he grabbed Malfoy by the arm and dragged him over to the car, shoving him into the passenger side. Malfoy yanked off his shoe, and Ron could see even before he got his sock off that his foot and ankle were rapidly swelling to an alarming size. Ron peered at Malfoy's shoe and backed away quickly when he saw there were several large, angry red ants crawling around the edge of it. They looked far too much like spiders for his comfort.

"Fucking hell," said Malfoy, Banishing the rest of the ants with his wand, obviously not caring if any Muggles were looking. He cast what Ron recognised as a painkilling charm, but it apparently didn't do a great deal of good, as Malfoy winced in pain when he tried to stand up. Maybe magic didn't work that well against normal creatures?

"Put that away," Ron hissed, gesturing to Malfoy's wand, as a girl in a blue sundress and a long ponytail climbed out of the truck beside them and strolled over.

"Y'all all right?" she said, looking concerned and helpful.

"No," said Malfoy. "Something vile decided to make lunch out of my ankle." He stuck his foot out at her, wiggling his toes a bit.

"Oh, honey, it's just a few fire ants," she said, making sympathetic noises. "You must be a little allergic for it to swell up like that."

"Allergic?" Malfoy sniffed. "Malfoys don't have allergies." His bottom lip stuck out slightly.

Ron coughed loudly, resisting the urge to mutter inbreeding under his breath, and wondered if fire ants were any relation to Blast-Ended Skrewts. With this effect on Malfoy, Hagrid definitely would have found them interestin' creatures. "Do they breathe fire?" Ron asked.

The girl looked at Ron in a way that made him realise that was probably not the right thing to ask. "Um, no," she said, bending down to peer at Malfoy's ankle again. "But they do have nasty stings, especially if you're allergic. You probably ought to put some ice on that, and prop it up, and ... hmm. You ought to put something on it to take the itch out, like Caladryl or something like that."

"What's that?" said Ron and Malfoy together.

"It's lotion with medicine in it - they probably have some in the convenience store there," she said, pointing to the store attached to the gas station.

"Muggle medicine?" said Malfoy, his face wrinkling in distaste. Ron punched him in the arm to shut him up, but not before the girl gave them another strange look. This time though, her look was more curious than anything.

"Muggles?" she asked cautiously. "As in... non-magic people?"

Ron and Malfoy exchanged a curious look. "Yes..." Malfoy said, equally cautiously.

"Oh good," said the girl, visibly relieved. "I can do this then." She glanced around quickly, then pulled a wand from the small purse slung over her shoulder, and whispered a spell Ron had never heard before but was obviously a painkilling charm over Malfoy's ankle.

This one obviously worked, because he wriggled his foot around easily, then gave her his most charming smile. "I am forever in your debt, you wonderful, wonderful woman," he said, taking her hand and planting a kiss firmly on her knuckles.

Ron rolled his eyes as the girl giggled.

"That won't last long," she said, putting her wand away. "And it won't get rid of the swelling. You'll need a potion for those stings - and if I wasn't on my way out of town, I'd brew it for you. But..." She fished around in her purse for some paper, and scribbled down some directions. "Here's what you'll need - and where you can get it, just down the road a bit."

The truck's horn beeped, and the driver waved at the girl impatiently. "I have to go - I hope this helps!" she said, dashing back to the truck, her flip-flops making quick slapping sounds on the pavement as she ran.

Ron looked down at the paper. The potion looked easy enough, and most of the ingredients were familiar - oil of camphor, powdered moonstone, murtlap essence - though he had no idea what Boo Hag tears were.

"How long does it take to brew?" said Malfoy.

"Er... six hours."

"Six hours!"

"Yeah," said Ron, tamping down the irritation that surged up. "And then you have to let it cool, and soak your foot in it for another half an hour, at least."

Malfoy was quiet for a minute as he inspected his sock and shoe at arm's length for any remaining ants. "Don't worry about it," he mumbled.

"Malfoy?"

"I said, don't worry about it!" he snapped, trying to put his sock back on. "You're in a hurry, aren't you? At this rate Potter will probably be married to the girl before we can even get down there."

Ron didn't know how to respond to that. Did Malfoy really care about whether Ron got to Harry in time to stop him from doing something stupid, or did he just want to get the chance to have some 'alone time' with Ron's backpack as soon as possible? The necklace in Ron's pocket felt like a very large and very clumsy weight just then.

"What do you care?" Ron snapped.

"I don't," said Malfoy. "But the sooner I get you back to Potter, the sooner I can get rid of you." He wasn't having much luck getting his sock back on.

"Don't be stupid," Ron said. "I'm not listening to you moan and groan about your stupid foot for the rest of the trip." And with that, he stalked off to the store to pay, really not in the mood to argue with Malfoy.

Finding the nearest wizarding district was as easy as driving two blocks and walking down a short alley, much like the entrance to Diagon Alley. Malfoy managed to talk about ten steps before scrunching up his face in pain. Ron couldn't tell if it was genuine pain or just an act designed to get him away from his backpack. Malfoy got them a room at a wizard-owned bed and breakfast, putting on a martyrful air as they trudged upstairs.

"I think the painkilling charm has worn off," he said dramatically, conjuring some ice and wrapping it in a towel. He held it to his swollen foot with a blissful expression on his face.

"I'm going to go get the stuff for your potion," Ron said shortly, making a big show of dumping his backpack on the other bed. "Try not to do anything stupid while I've gone," he said, slamming the door behind him.

He returned three-quarters of an hour later with everything for the potion, along with some food and a copy of the local wizarding newspaper, among other things. Without speaking to Malfoy, he set to work making the potion, slamming things around with a little more force than necessary.

"It's not like I stepped on that stupid ant hill on purpose, Weasley," Malfoy said after a few minutes. He still had the ice on his foot, and it was propped up on more pillows than Ron felt really necessary.

"Whatever, Malfoy." He was angry that Malfoy had ruined his cheerful mood of the morning, and frustrated that absolutely nothing on this trip had gone at all according to plan.

"At least it'll give you time to figure out what you're going to do when you see Potter," Malfoy said. "You need some kind of plan."

Ron added the Boo Hag tears and left the potion to brew. "Whatever plan I come up with, I'm not going to tell you about it." He reached into one of the shopping bags and pulled out a small model of a palmetto tree he'd bought at a souvenir display. "Here, this ought to keep you occupied for a while," he said, tossing it to Malfoy and feeling slightly malicious.

"What does it do?"

"Tap it with your wand and see."

Malfoy frowned, then touched the tip of his wand to the little tree. It went limp and drooped dramatically, shedding its tiny fronds into a pile on Malfoy's palm.

Malfoy's face went a mottled pink. "Really fucking funny, Weasley," he said, throwing the tree at Ron's head.

"That's for all the cracks you made about my family over the years," Ron said. The joke didn't seem as funny as it had when he'd seen the little tree in the store. At the time he'd imagined telling Harry about it and sharing a good laugh at Malfoy's expense. Seeing Malfoy's reaction to it, though, wasn't as funny as he thought it would be. He scooped it up from where it had landed and dropped it in the waste bin.

Ron couldn't tell whether Malfoy had been in his bag or not while he was gone. It didn't look like it, but then again Malfoy was one of those people who probably had private tutoring on how to snoop around in other people's stuff without getting caught.

They were doing a pretty good job of ignoring each other. Ron lay on his bed and read the newspaper about six times, and Malfoy lay quietly on the other bed with his foot up. The small wooden box with the Malfoy crest sat on the bedside table between them, and occasionally Ron would notice Malfoy looking at it. After a while, Malfoy reached over and picked up the box, balancing it carefully on his stomach and looking at it.

Finally Ron couldn't take the silence any longer. "Why are you carrying around a box of dirt, Malfoy?"

"Why do you care?" Malfoy asked.

"Er... I don't, really. Just making conversation."

Malfoy opened the box and looked inside for a long time before closing it again. "There's a tradition in the Malfoy line that anyone wanting to start a new business venture needs to have a bit of soil from another Malfoy property to work the family charms that ensure success," he said softly.

"I thought you told your family to fuck off, and they disowned you?"

"My father wasn't the be-all and end-all of the Malfoy family, any more than your swotty brother was the epitome of the Weasleys," Malfoy snapped.

"What'd you have to put it in my bag for?" Ron pressed on, ignoring the jab about Percy.

"Americans get all bent out of shape about agricultural products, even dirt, coming into the country," he said.

Ron's mouth fell open. "What would they have done if they'd stopped me at Customs?" he yelped.

"Probably detained you or something," Malfoy said with a shrug. "But they don't stop people like you anyway. You look too honest."

"Did they stop you?"

"Yes, they did. Is the potion ready?" Malfoy asked, sitting up and shuffling over to the cauldron. "This really itches."

"I dunno," said Ron. "Does it look ready to you?"

Malfoy sat down, put the cauldron in front of him, and gingerly put his foot inside. "Oh..." he breathed. "Thank Merlin."

"Can I ask you another question?" said Ron.

"Am I going to be able to stop you?"

"What kind of business are you going to start?" He didn't really expect Malfoy to tell him, so he was surprised when Malfoy's face lit up with the kind of look Hermione got when she was about to embark on one of her massive projects, like S.P.E.W.

"You know how much trouble this trip has been, having to stay in Muggle hotels and deal with Muggles all the time?" When Ron nodded, Malfoy continued. "The only choices for wizards travelling in the States are either Muggle hotels or small wizarding bed-and-breakfasts like this, unless it's a huge city like New York or Atlanta or Chicago, where there are wizarding hotels right up next to the Muggle ones. But I want to have a wizarding resort. The kind of place that caters to every whim a wizard could possibly want, preferably somewhere warm and sunny with lots of white sand. Can you imagine the demand for something like that? And I want to develop easily producible transatlantic portkeys that would bring people back and forth at a moment's notice instead of relying on Muggle airplanes."

"You'd make a lot of money with that," Ron admitted grudgingly.

"I'd only cater to the wizarding elite, of course," Malfoy added. "The restaurants would only serve the finest international cuisine; there would be house elves to attend to one's every need..."

"But why here?" Ron asked.

Malfoy swirled his foot around in the cauldron. "You saw Nott, didn't you?"

"Yeah - what's he doing here, anyway?"

"Did you ever pay attention to what the Ministry did with all those people they suspected were Death Eaters but couldn't prove anything?" Malfoy asked. "Or were you too busy celebrating with Potter to even care?"

"I actually didn't give a shit where they went," said Ron truthfully. "I suppose you're going to tell me?"

"They were encouraged to leave the country," said Malfoy. "The Ministry seized most of their assets under the new laws regarding suspected Dark dealings, and they were left with nothing. But deals were made with the American government to take them in, give them just enough to live off of. And because the American Department of Magical Arts won't let foreigners Apparate without special permits - and of course they're not giving them permits - all it really did was turn them into bigger criminals than they already were. They can't participate fully in regular wizarding society, since they can't Apparate, and that makes it tough for them to hold down a job. And American wizards aren't as isolated from Muggles as we are, so there are lots of things over here that British wizards don't have a clue about. So they steal, like Nott, and manage to get by, but it's not right."

"And you want to give them real jobs," said Ron, starting to put the pieces together.

"Yes," said Malfoy. "But not just jobs - I want to make them shareholders in the business, so they can get back what they used to have."

"You really want to do this, don't you?" said Ron, impressed in spite of himself. He never imagined Malfoy caring about anyone but himself; even at Hogwarts, the other Slytherins had seemed more hangers-on than real friends, and Malfoy seemed to treat them like accessories rather than people. But maybe he'd actually cared about them more than he let on. Obviously he did, if he cared enough to go to all this trouble to make sure they had comfortable lives.

"More than I've ever wanted to do anything else," Malfoy said.

"And you'd do anything to make it happen, wouldn't you?"

"Anything."

"You'd even get down on your knees and beg?" Ron asked.

"Malfoys don't beg."

"Not even for this?"

"I... might," Malfoy said reluctantly. "Only for this, though."

"Then what makes you so different from me?"

Malfoy stared at him for a minute, and then burst out laughing. "Not much," he said. "But if you tell anyone I said that, I'll have to kill you."

Ron lay awake that night with the uncomfortable weight of Malfoy's necklace on his mind. He still couldn't figure out how the necklace figured into Malfoy's scheme, or if it figured into it at all. He had no reason to believe that Malfoy was being less than honest about his plans for the wizarding resort, but he still felt like Malfoy was holding something important back. Malfoy might want to help his expatriated Slytherin friends rebuild their fortunes, but there was no reason for that generosity to extend to a broken-hearted Gryffindor.

But if Malfoy was only ferrying him around to get his necklace back, why hadn't he given up by now and cursed him and searched him down? If he had something really nefarious in mind, he would have done it already, wouldn't he?

"Weasley?"

Ron was so absorbed in his train of thought that it took him a minute to realise that Malfoy had spoken. "Yeah?"

"Do you still want Potter back?"

What kind of stupid question is that? Ron wanted to ask, but he bit that back and said only, "Yes."

Malfoy sighed. "Well, you're obviously not going to manage it on your own. So I'm going to help you."

"Help me?" Ron turned on his side, looking over at Malfoy's bed, but he couldn't see his face in the dark.

"I'm going to help you get that idiot back. Consider it a favour repaid for bringing my 'stupid box of dirt' through Customs for me."

Ron's stomach did an odd flip-flopping thing. "Er... thanks?"

"Don't thank me. Just shut up and go to sleep. We've got to get up early and start working on a Plan." There was a rustle of sheets as Malfoy turned over, and he said nothing else.

"So, Malfoy," Ron said as they finished their breakfast the next morning. "How are you going to pay for this wizarding resort? Your parents cut you out of the Malfoy fortune, didn't they?"

"They couldn't cut me totally out," said Malfoy. "There are laws against that sort of thing."

"But you obviously don't have enough money to buy it, or you would have bought it already, wouldn't you?"

Malfoy folded his napkin and laid it neatly beside his plate. "I've run into an unexpected difficulty," he said, setting his mouth into a thin line.

"A difficulty?"

"I... had something to sell. But it didn't work out."

"Didn't work out? Why not?"

"I lost it, okay?" Malfoy said irritably. "I had something to sell, and I lost it. So it's going to take a little longer than I anticipated to get things moving."

Ron bit back a chuckle. "You had something to sell? What was it? Stocks? Bonds? A little chip off the Philosopher's Stone?"

"It doesn't matter, Weasley, because I lost it, okay? Can we change the subject, please?" Malfoy pushed his chair back and started to get up, tossing money on the table for the bill.

"You mean you don't have a backup plan? A strategy?" Ron got up and grabbed Malfoy's wrist, stopping him from leaving. "Something other than bullshit to fall back on? Maybe something like this?"

He turned Malfoy's hand palm-up, dropping the necklace into it. Malfoy's eyes went huge, and his mouth fell open in shock.

A huge laugh bubbled up out of Ron's chest. "Come on, you stupid git, let's go," he said, dragging Malfoy out of the restaurant.