Draco Malfoy and the Last Year

Level 2.4: The Nightmares of Thomas Dey

Draco chewed on his sausage at breakfast. Millicent and Goyle were looking at each other with dopey expressions, and it finally occurred to him that they had become an item over the summer. Blaise Zabini grabbed his morning scone before wandering off again. It was a daily ritual for Zabini, but Draco had stopped taking notice of it years ago.

Crabbe tried to engage him in Quidditch discussion. Draco responded to some degree, but he found more of his brain taken up by Indigo's new hair color. The first thing he had done after he had decided to stay at Hogwarts was wash the temporary dye out of his hair. He had tried to hide under the brown coloring, and he wondered if that was what Indigo was trying to do. Hide.

Indigo for her part was watching Daphne and trying to mimic her posture but frequently retreating to her normal slump whenever anyone looked her way. She reminded him of a rabbit peeping out of her burrow.

The owls brought Persephone another package. This one contained a standard potion ingredients kit. Draco read the short note attached to it.

Think of the ocean between us as a rather inconvenient pond,

and let me know if you require anything more.

~S.O.S.~

The obvious finally clicked for him. "Initials. They're intials."

Persephone nodded, while she played with the little ingredient filled glass bottles.

"What does the 'O' stand for?"

"Oliver," Persephone said.

"Oliver?" Draco repeated.

"Who's Oliver?" Pansy asked. Draco glanced involuntarily at the teachers table. Professor Snape was watching them, and Draco caught his eye before he looked away. There was no warmth in the return gaze.

"He was my best friend at my old school," said Persephone. When Draco looked back, she gave him a secretive smile.

"Oh, it's sweet," Daphne said. She had managed to acquire the short note.

"Let me see." Pansy took the note. "Why doesn't he just sign it Oliver?"

"Well, that's his middle name for one," Crabbe said irritably.

"Inconvenient pond..." Indigo peeped in a sort of dreamy voice, then passed the note on to Alice.

Alice frowned at it, obviously not finding it all that stirring but not wanting to be left out. "Do you miss him?"

"Yes," Persephone said, smiling openly. "But it's almost like he's here with me." Draco felt his brow knit, and he tried to focus on his sausage.

"You've got a crush don't you?" Daphne said, grinning with meddlesome delight. "Oh, she's blushing! Isn't it cute?" Daphne reached past Pansy to pet Persephone on the top of her silvery head, which just made Persephone's cheeks pinker.

Pansy's eyes lit up. "Were you particularly fond of each other?" she asked.

It took a lot of self-restraint for Draco to resist the urge to bang his head on the table. "I'm done," he muttered. He took one last gulp of pumpkin juice before standing. Crabbe and Goyle took some frantic last bites before following him.

As he was leaving, Hermione entered, and the sight of her brought such a rapid change to his mood he broke step for a moment. No one noticed. Crabbe and Goyle thought he had paused to wait for them. Hermione gave no indication of having seen him, and he was careful not to watch her.

Not that he needed to. He had watched her make her way to the Gryffindor table so many mornings over the past seven years that he knew how she would shift her book bag, at what point she would turn to take her seat, how her bushy brown hair would bounce and catch the light from a certain window creating a short lived halo effect. For once, this reaction to her did not immediately spark self-reproach. He was not plagued by the imagined disapproval of his father. It was okay that he had watched Hermione. It was okay that he liked seeing her. Did you hear that, father? It's okay.

To be fair this preoccupation with Hermione was as much his mother's fault as his father's. She had raised him on fairy tales. Princesses in fairy tales were always in danger or in hiding. The ones in hiding always had some special qualities that only the prince could see. In many of Draco's fantasies Hermione was adopted, the lost heiress of a proper wizarding family, a princess in disguise. It explained her extraordinary talents to such satisfaction that he half believed it. But that was his fantasy Hermione. He had yet to discover whether or not the real Hermione was a princess.

While he had been physically present at Hogwarts for over a week, his thoughts had been so inwardly bent that he felt like he had been walking around in one of those darkness clouds Dumbledore had used in their first Dark Arts lesson, barely noticing anything that did not directly affect him. He still felt as though the darkness was hovering around him, but it had cleared a bit.

As he walked to class, he became aware of how many portraits lined the walls of Hogwarts. Before he had never considered them more than noisy decoration, but now, he watched the images of the witches and wizards inside them wander from frame to frame, whispering to one another and watching the students. What a wonderful network of spies Dumbledore had set up. No wonder the old fool seemed to know everything. Draco felt pleased to have unlocked one of the Headmaster's secrets, though he wondered how he could have been so dense as not to realize it before.

Persephone must have realized it. The Astronomy Tower was remarkably void of portraits. It had probably been the reason that she had spoken to him so freely there and kept her manner so guarded everywhere else.

He was taking Persephone's advice, clinging to her words like a lost child, so any sign of intelligence from her was particularly comforting. His objective with Hermione was hardly as lofty as Persephone's. He doubted he would ever be able to talk Granger into attending any dance with him. Even if she would, he was not certain he would stay at Hogwarts that long. The possibility of immediate flight stayed on his mind at all times. He kept his small bag of gems in his pocket wherever he went, just in case. This dance project with Hermione was doomed to fail anyway and served merely as a way to pass the time until he had to flee...but it would be nice if he could get her to stop hating him.

When Hermione dropped her books in the Charms corridor, it was too perfect an opportunity. Draco detached himself from Crabbe and Goyle. He crossed the distance between them in two long quick strides, scooped up the two dropped books, and presented them to Hermione from a dropped knee position. He placed them on top of the third book she had managed to hold with her bandage hand. Catching sight off the bandage, he added, "It was an accident, you know," before getting back to his feet and continuing on to Charms.

He took a moment alone to savor his small victory, before rejoining his friends. In his opinion the whole thing could not have gone better. He felt that he had done it all in one fluid motion. The knee position was a nice subtle touch, rather prince-like, but so quick as to have not been overdone. Hermione's stunned expression had been absolutely delicious. He tried to keep his smile in check.

He settled into the seat between Crabbe and Goyle in the Charms classroom. Hermione was not the only one who looked stunned. "What did you do?" Goyle asked in hushed tones. Crabbe was giving him the same half-curious, half-concerned look.

"What do you mean?" Draco asked.

"You did something to Granger's books, didn't you?" Crabbe prompted.

"No, not a thing," said Draco. He was mildly amused by the confused looks they gave him. He looked across the classroom to see Granger and Potter prodding the books as if expecting them to explode. Draco choked back a laugh. He could hardly have caused them more distress if he had slipped something inside the cover.

Crabbe and Goyle continued to look confused. He gave each of them a quick wink and let them misinterpret it as they would. They both chuckled and relaxed.

He contemplated the matter over lunch and made plans to try again when Granger would be away from Potter and Weasley's influence. They both had Astronomy that evening. He would still have Crabbe and Goyle in tow, but they were usually both half asleep by then.

Transfiguration class had them creating doors out of various sections of the classroom wall. Draco could imagine an endless number of useful ways to apply the spell, so he pushed thoughts of Hermione aside to pay attention. This was their first attempt and thus a practice day, but eventually their doors were going to be graded on two main points. The first being whether they actually opened to what lay beyond the wall and the second on style.

Goyle created a rather large, ornate set of double doors, which refused to budge no matter how hard they tugged on the gilded latches. The latches themselves retained the feel of stone. Crabbe went for a simpler approach creating a red colonial style door. It opened but revealed only another layer of the thick stone wall. Draco's door opened onto the adjacent, though currently empty, classroom. He had purposefully left the door looking like the stone he had made it out of with a very discreet crack serving as a handle. He thought the idea rather clever. Unfortunately McGonagall was rather set in her opinion of what constituted style.

Well, I thought it was clever, fantasy Hermione said in his ear. She put her hand on his shoulder and slid up next to him with a seductive grace that Daphne Greengrass would have envied but spoke in cool, logical Hermione tones.

Go Away, he told her...it. He stole a glance at the real Hermione. Her French doors were neatly cracked to show the other classroom beyond, and Weasley was watching her with a mixture of admiration and irritation. Potter hardly seemed to be paying attention. His door looked familiar, and after a moment Draco realized it was the door to Harry's bedroom, not the one at Hogwarts but the one from Privet Drive. It even had that weird little cat-flap towards the bottom.

He felt like he was getting some special insight into Potter's psyche but lacked the training to interpret it. At the end of class McGonagall waved her wand and turned all their doors back into solid wall.

He excused himself from Crabbe and Goyle that afternoon by muttering something about prefect duties. It was probably ridiculous, but he wanted to talk to the school portraits. Normally this was something he avoided as much as possible, talking portraits had always annoyed him. He preferred photographs, which moved but stayed silent.

"Hello," he said to a portrait of a small girl in bonnet.

"Hello," she replied with an elegant little curtsy.

Draco checked the hall to make sure no one was close enough to listen. "Are...are you a painting?"

The girl giggled furiously. "Of course, I am."

"Right," Draco said gruffly. He felt silly enough without the painting laughing at him. He was tempted to abandon the whole exercise but knew the same questions would come back to haunt him later. "Who are you? I mean, who are you supposed to be a painting of?"

"The Duchess of Manchester," she curtsied again. "But you can call me Isabelle. And I know who you are. You're Draco Malfoy."

Draco tried not to show how disconcerted this intelligence made him feel. "How long have you been here?"

"Oh, about a hundred years or so, I think," Isabelle's portrait said. "I remember your father and your grandfather and your great grand father. But your father I remember better because he had that long hair just the color of yours. Boys aren't really supposed to wear their hair that long, but he got away with it. He used to walk Narcissa Black to class."

Draco felt a muscle tighten in his throat and swallowed to relax it. "You can travel to other portraits can't you?"

"Oh, yes," the portrait said. "There's a nice young witch in the fourth floor corridor I like to play with sometimes."

Draco had asked Persephone the same question, when they still back at the Malfoy's manor. If you're bored why don't you go visit the other paintings?

Because, I can't. I'm not a painting. I'm stuck in here.

"Are there any portraits you can't get into?" he asked.

"Well, some of the others are a tad territorial," Isabelle confided in a low voice. "Lot of older wizards are a bit stodgy."

"I can imagine," he replied. "But...are there any portraits...are there any subjects that are stuck in their portrait?"

The girl blinked at him as though this was an incredibly strange thing for him to ask. "No, not that I know of," she said slowly.

It was probably a ridiculous idea that anyone could be trapped in a portrait at Hogwarts, but then a couple months ago, he would have said it was ridiculous for anyone to be trapped in a portrait in his attic. "So, what's it like? Being a painting?"

The girl continued to look at him with the same blank expression. "I don't understand."

"You have the memories of the witch that you're a painting of right? So you should remember what it's like to be human to live outside a painting? So how is this different?"

The girl played with her skirt as though she was considering another curtsy. "I have some memories, but I don't really understand what you mean."

"Are you happy?"

The girl cocked her head. "Happy?"

"Do you ever feel sad?" Draco tried. "Do you ever want to get out?"

"Out of what?"

"Your painting."

"I told you I go play with the young witch on the fourth floor."

"No, I mean out of paintings all together. Like I am."

Isabelle laughed. It was a very pretty, little girl laugh, but it struck Draco as very empty. "That's silly," she said.

He had had enough and walked away without a word. He glanced back over his shoulder to see if Isabelle was annoyed by his rudeness, but she just waved goodbye to him blissfully.

****************

Later that evening he climbed the steps to the Astronomy Tower, this time for his own class. Crabbe and Goyle were with him again. He had been careful to stall them at the foot of the stairs, making sure that Hermione got a few minutes head start before following. He wanted her to settle into her spot before he got there. Professor Sinistra was consistently strict about her seating policy, you pick a window first night and you stay there for the year. She claimed it helped her know who was talking in the often-dim classroom.

Each window had a telescope (they were set up low so the tired students could sit on the floor while star gazing). Like every year, Crabbe and Goyle took the two seats closest to the door, and Hermione had set herself up along the opposite wall of the circular room. Draco would guess about half the students in the class had come. There would still be a few blank windows since this was an advanced class and a lot of students had given it up for more practical courses. He licked his lips, hoping he could time it all just right.

"I think I dropped it on the stairs," he told the back of Crabbe and Goyle's heads. "I'll be right back." Being just as sleepy as he had predicted, they merely made grunts of acknowledgement. He hurried back out the doors and then slowly down the staircase.

Alice and Indigo passed him on the way up. Alice stifled a yawn, and Indigo gave him a shy smile. "See you in class?"

"Sure, I'll be up in a minute."

When they were safely in the classroom, he stopped bothering to descend and simply watched the bottom of the stairs while other students filed past him. "Come on," he murmured. He felt a brief moment of worry, and then he spotted Zabini. Zabini began his slow ascent, slow because he kept one hand on the rail and held an open book in the other. Draco went to meet him. "Hey, Zabini."

Zabini looked up with a slightly confused expression. He looked slightly more confused when he realized that Draco had been the one to call to him.

"Do me a favor," Draco said. "Take the third seat on left when you get to the classroom."

His brow furrowed into an even more quizzical expression. He looked ready to ask Draco a question but shrugged, marked and closed his book, and continued up the stairs. Draco followed him back up but tarried a minute until he saw Professor Sinistra start her ascent before following him inside. Sure enough, Zabini had taken the gap the other Slytherins had left for Draco. Zabini had much darker coloring than Draco but was about the same height and build. Crabbe was adjusting his telescope and Goyle had his head in his hands, so neither of them had noticed the substitution. Indigo in the fourth seat had noticed but was still too surprised or timid to say anything. Alice in seat five would not care until someone else brought the issue up. Next to Alice was her Ravenclaw friend Lisa Turpin and next to her another Ravenclaw girl Su Li and next to Li was her Ravenclaw boyfriend Stephen Cornfoot.

The other students were spaced out so that nowhere in the room were there three empty windows together. Next to Hermione Granger was absolutely no one directly on either side.

"Draco?" Indigo said uncertainly.

"Guess I'm late," Draco said lightly, trying hard not to sound too triumphant.

Crabbe and Goyle looked up. "Hey, Zabini that's Draco's seat, get up," Goyle commanded.

Zabini shrugged, looking only blandly amused by this game of musical chairs he had been swept into, and began to stand. "Oh, don't make him get up," Draco said. He put his hand on Zabini's shoulder in what was supposed to look like a friendly gesture and physically intended to keep him firmly in his seat. "He got here first, only fair."

"We'll move then," Crabbe said, but looked about to find, as Draco already knew, there was no three person gap.

"We could get everyone to move down one," Indigo suggested.

"That's way too much trouble," Draco said. "I'll just grab an empty seat." He walked off before they could debate any further, ignoring their confused faces. Casually he crossed the room and dropped his bag at the window next to Granger's. She was already playing with her telescope and jotting things in her notebook. She glanced his way with mild interest to see who was taking the seat and did a double take, to which he was very careful not to react. Draco was careful not to glance at her at all, as he sat down cross-legged and began adjusting his telescope.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him.

"Sitting," he said, sparing her only a short glance.

"Here?"

"I like this side," he replied without looking at her at all. There was something absolutely mad about abandoning your best friends to spend the semester sitting by a girl who could not stand you, but it was a madness he found exhilarating. He felt his pulse quicken just a bit, anxious for Professor Sinistra to enter and make the seating final, hoping Hermione's pride would keep her from moving. He was sitting by Hermione, something he had not done since he started at Hogwarts. That in itself was rather intoxicating. Now if only he talk to her without giving himself away.

Hermione was uncertain whether glaring or pointedly ignoring him was the best approach and shifted between the two options. "I'm not moving," she said firmly after a few seconds.

"Fine," Draco said. "Neither am I." He let the silence hang for a very long minute. He looked at her surreptitiously, being careful not to turn his head too much. He did not want to advertise the fact he was talking to Hermione in case Crabbe and Goyle were watching.

Her face betrayed nothing, but with her hands retracted into her lap, she was gently rubbing her thumb over the bandage. He felt a small pang of guilt. He wondered if she was actually afraid of him, if he was hurting her more by inflicting his presence on her. "How's your hand?" he asked.

"It's fine," she said shortly.

Professor Sinistra entered at that point. Brandishing a stack of papers that looked suspiciously like a quiz. "I thought we'd see how much you remember," she said. "This won't be a major grade, but it will be a grade so do your best."

Draco glanced over his shoulder to see Crabbe and Goyle's forlorn expressions. Professor Sinistra swooped upon them first like a bird of prey picking out the weakest members of the flock. She would continue clockwise, checking everyone's seat for the year, so Draco had a moment before she reached him.

"It was an accident," he told Hermione again in a low voice.

"I heard you," she murmured back irritably.

Persephone had been right about something. He almost smiled, but he was trying very hard to look sincere and worried a smile might ruin it. "But do you believe me?"

"Well, you didn't get detention, did you?" She spared him a pointed glance, and he relaxed.

"I am sorry," he added quickly.

"Shh!" she hissed.

Professor Sinistra handed Draco his quiz paper, and he gave her one of his most charming smiles. She returned his smile with one that said she thought he was up to something that was probably harmless but would be watching anyway.

****************

The Malfoy mansion had few portraits and hung only in the more public rooms, though there were a few in guest bedrooms for guests who might require an extra eye upon them. Hogwarts by contrast was brimming with them. Draco was not satisfied that Isabelle's knowledge of them was as extensive as it could be. When he had a private moment, he tried the same questions with a few other portraits, hoping to get more enlightening answers from some of the stodgy wizards and witches. For the most part his efforts were fruitless, he learned a little more about the daily lives of the portraits themselves (which were frightfully dull in his opinion) but found no indication of any similarly trapped witches and wizards.

He knew finding a trapped wizard was unlikely. He was not sure exactly what he would do if he did find one, but the urge to look was overwhelming.

His overall mood had improved greatly. Crabbe and Goyle were giving him the benefit of the doubt, convinced he was playing a very elaborate joke on Granger. He remained noncommittal when they confronted him with questions and let them think what they wanted. He got no letters the following morning, which was something of a relief. Persephone got another package, this one filled with socks, and he found it, and more specifically Pansy's baffled reaction to it, nearly as hysterical as Persephone did.

He had Ancient Runes with Hermione too, but there was no chance of manufacturing even an implausible excuse to sit by her. It was all for the best, when he thought about it. Ancient Runes was a far more demanding subject than Astronomy, and Professor Noachian was even less forgiving about private conversations during his class than Professor Snape. Besides translating hardly held the romance of stargazing.

Friday's lunch marked the end of a full week of classes, and having survived them all, Draco was beginning to feel a sense of normality return to his world. His friends were getting used to Persephone. They may not have understood Draco's attachment to her, but they were accepting it. Goyle had been the one to sacrifice his spot next to Draco at the lunch table. Draco was not sure if it had been a verbal or silent agreement between the two of them, but since Goyle was the one with a girlfriend to sit beside, it seemed fair. Crabbe sat between them so the trio was shifted rather than broken. Pansy very clearly established her place as directly across from wherever Draco was sitting. Daphne on her left, Indigo on her right, Alice fitting in where she could. Unfortunately, the significance of seating arrangements was lost on Persephone, who spent Friday's lunch sitting with the sixth year students.

But, any normalcy was strictly illusion. The empty seat on Draco's left reminded him of the other students who were missing. He had never spent a lot of time with Addy Flint, but he missed her sharply. Mostly he worried what her absence signified. He knew Addy's father was a Death Eater, and he strongly suspected that her brother Marcus had joined their ranks. He knew Addy well enough to know she would not have wanted to leave Hogwarts voluntarily and knew her father well enough to know he would not have acted to displease her without some reason. Pansy was completely right about her being a daddy's girl. Was her absence because Addy had joined Voldemort? Draco could not picture Addy with her butterfly clips and pink lip gloss wearing hooded cloaks and killing librarians. Addy had gotten sick slicing open earthworms for Potions. He could not picture her father letting her get close enough to see what he had seen. He worried about her but worried more that her absence signified that Hogwarts was a dangerous place to be, more dangerous than when the Chamber of Secrets had been open, or Sirius Black had come, bringing the dementors. Perhaps the feeling of safety he had built in the castle was an illusion.

Normally, while he might not reveal his anxiety, he would have at least discussed the situation with his friends. He might have called it exciting or interesting to hide his fear, but he would still have been able to use them as a sounding board. He wanted to think he could trust Crabbe and Goyle at least. The three of them had been fast friends since they were five, but they had been out of touch during his lost summer. He felt he had changed a good bit in that brief period. It was possible they had changed just as much, only in the other direction.

Theodore Nott was the nephew of a Death Eater. His father worked at the Ministry of Magic. Since Potter had only had been able to give the Ministry investigators last names, Nott's father had faced an inquiry that had caused no end of strife with his family. Theodore still avoided speaking about it, and though ultimately Nott's father had retained his Ministry position, Draco was not sure where he or Theodore placed their loyalties.

Zabini remained as much an enigma as he had ever been. Draco had shared a room with him for six years but still knew more about his father than he knew about Blaise. His father's name was Alekos, and he made furniture, a master craftsman, who besides making nice looking chairs often endowed them with a variety of magical properties. He was a widower with one son, Blaise, and one daughter who was six years older than Blaise and had gotten married a couple of years back. Draco could not remember to whom.

The only thing Draco knew about Blaise for certain was that he liked to read. Perhaps as a result of the books permanently fixed in his hands, Blaise gave off an aura of intelligence, but Draco had discovered his grades were fair at best. The books he carried were never schoolbooks. Draco had made a few attempts to include him into the fold during his first year but given up as Blaise proved nonresponsive. Blaise would sit down when asked, but if not asked, he would find some quiet corner. He was nearly always the last one to return to the dorm at night and never made much noise when he came up. He was never unpleasant, just absent. Draco forgot he was there most of the time.

Now, it disturbed him to look up and realize how often Blaise was there, sitting quietly in the background. He was grateful for his compliance in the Astronomy Tower but wondered why Blaise had been so compliant. He decided to seek him out that afternoon and make another attempt to draw him into a conversation.

He eventually found him in the common room and dragged him out of a windowsill to sit at one of the tables. Zabini looked mildly surprised by Draco's sudden interest in him but followed with the same easy compliance he had the night before. "What's up?" Zabini asked, politely laying his book aside to give Draco his full attention.

"Well, it's our last year," Draco said, managing not to sound as awkward as he felt. "And as a prefect, I'm supposed to keep my eye on the other students, help them out, but I realized even though we've shared a room for a while now, I don't really know you that well."

"You want to get to know me?" Zabini said, looking bemused.

Draco shrugged. "Well, enough to be a good prefect anyway. What classes are you taking?"

"Astronomy, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts."

Draco blinked. "You're in Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

Zabini laughed, which Draco had very rarely heard him do. "You might want to look behind you every now and then."

Draco tensed, but forced himself to relax. Zabini simply means that he sits towards the back of the classroom, while you're a front row student. Or he's making snide social commentary, but it's not a threat. Probably.

"So-uh, what do you think of Dumbledore?"

"Improvement over last year's teacher," Zabini said with a shrug and a half-smile. "But then, well...you know."

In all honesty, Draco did not know, having completely missed the previous Dark Arts Professor's teaching style, but since they were long gone, Draco did not see a point to inquiring further. "Are you curious about why I asked you to do me that favor?"

"Extremely," Blaise said. "But I figured if I waited the answer would unveil itself."

"I like being mysterious," said Draco.

"All mysteries unravel with time," Blaise said blithely. "That's what I like about them."

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco spotted Indigo's bright bob. So did Zabini, and his expression shifted. "Hey, Stump," he said gently.

Indigo paused and nervously redirected herself towards their table.

"Did you lose some weight this summer?" Zabini asked. "You look a bit thin."

With the first sentence, Indigo had blushed as though expecting a compliment, but Zabini's tone on the last word hardly sounded complimentary. "Thin?" she repeated squeakily.

She looked at Draco beseechingly, and he studied her. Her school robes hid most of her figure, but her wrists stuck out of her sleeves. He could make out the shape of the bone beneath her skin. He was not rude enough to tell her she had bony wrists. "Yeah, a bit. I hadn't noticed, with the new hair."

"You hate it, don't you?!"

Draco was taken aback by her sudden volume and the melodramatic despair in her eyes. "What?"

"My hair," she cried. "You hate it! You think it looks stupid!"

"No, not stupid," Draco back-pedaled awkwardly. "Just different."

"I wonder why you changed it," Zabini said. "It was very nice before."

"Before?" Indigo squeaked. "But not now?"

"It's not bad now," Draco said. "It's just..."

"Unnatural," Zabini supplied.

"Yes, unnatural," Draco agreed. Indigo let out a sort of distressed wail and raced up the stairs of the girl's dorm.

"Really, Draco!" Daphne scolded him from the nearby couch. She gave him a half-disappointed, half-furious glare, and made a slamming gesture with her hands for emphasis before hurrying up the stairs after Indigo.

Draco looked helplessly at Zabini who looked just as lost as he did. "Bit high strung isn't she?" said Zabini.

"Well, girls can be sensitive about their hair," Persephone said, placing her hand on the table, and staring up the stairs. Draco had to remind himself that people could not Apparate on the Hogwarts grounds, because he was quite sure she had not been in the common room five minutes ago.

"Where have you been?" he asked her.

"Oh, I stayed after Potions to ask Professor Snape something," she answered still watching the stairs.

"Your Potions class ended three hours ago," he pointed out.

"Well, it was a complicated question...I better go see about her." And with that, she raced up the stairs.

It surprised Draco that Indigo had yelled at him, but he could not get too upset over it. Zabini was right about her being high strung. For the moment, Zabini seemed to be a sympathetic spirit, so Draco talked him into doing homework at the same table. After a while, Persephone came back down to join them.

"What are you doing?"

"Homework."

"Oh, right! Homework." She ran back upstairs to the girls dorm, and returned with a some schoolbooks. The three of them work in silence for a while.

"Can I join you?" a young, proper voice belonging to Charles Bulstrode asked. They gestured him towards an empty seat. Charles worked with them quietly for at least a half-hour, before Crabbe and Goyle showed up.

"Please tell me you're working on Charms," Crabbe said as he settled into one of the remaining chairs. They all shifted their book piles so an equally hopeful looking Goyle could fit his on the table.

"No, Dark Arts," said Draco.

"It's so much harder this year!" a distressed voice came from behind him. Draco twisted in his seat to see two second year boys at the table behind him. "Yeah, it's awful," the second boy agreed.

"Let me see what you covering," Draco said, holding out his hand for their textbook. The first boy showed him. "Oh my--we didn't cover any of this until third year."

Blaise turned the text so he could examine it. "We didn't really cover much of anything until third year," he said.

"That's true," Draco admitted. "But still, this is a little advanced for the first of the year isn't it. He's starting them out on boggarts, Pogrebin, and dementors."

"Do you want some help?" Persephone asked brightly.

"Yes! Please!"

Persephone closed up her own text and relocated to the boys' table. Charles pushed back from the table and picked up his stack as well. "I might need some help on D.A. as well."

"D.A.?" Draco repeated.

"The Defense class. Dark Arts," Charles explained.

"Don't call it the D.A.," Draco said.

"Oh, okay, but I thought I heard some of the older students call it that..." He trailed off as Draco gave him a hard stare. Charles quickly moved to Persephone's table. Draco tried to go back to reading his text but did not take in any of the words. That was interesting. His father would certainly like to know that the D.A. was still active.

"Not that I'll tell him," Draco muttered.

You might want to look behind you every now and then.

Draco glanced over each of his shoulders. For the most part, the common room was quiet. Many of the students were celebrating the end of the class week and their time before curfew outside. Only a small spattering was sitting at the common room worktables. Victoria Dey and what must have been her brother had a table to themselves.

They were beautiful children, fine boned with the largest eyes and darkest, smoothest skin Draco had ever seen. He could understand why no one was sitting with them. Victoria Dey exuded an aura of darkness that had nothing to do with her skin tone. Draco had never seen her smile or give any other sign of expression. Her brother seemed to be cut from the same mold, though he did not give off the same unapproachable power. He glanced at the other boys. Though his expression did not change, Draco was sure that he was contemplating joining them.

"Thomas," his sister said in a voice, which seemed uncommonly deep for a small thirteen-year-old girl and managed to convey a sharp rebuke without inflection. Thomas obediently snapped his head back around to his textbook.

"Hey, Sally," one of the second year boys called out.

"Hallo," a second year girl said. She and her two friends approached the table. "We've been in the library," she said in the same forlorn tone, the boys had had earlier. "Are you working on Dark Arts?"

"Yeh, she's helping us." He indicated Persephone. "She's a sixth year, knows loads."

"Well, I had a good teacher at my old school," Persephone said modestly. "Do you want to join us?"

The second year girls nearly fell over themselves scrambling for chairs.

By the time dinner approached, Draco had finished his Dark Arts reading and guided Crabbe and Goyle through their Charms dilemma. The tension at the table behind him had faded, and occasional bursts of laughter were cropping up. Victoria Dey slammed her textbook shut, and everyone took that as a signal to pack up and head to the Great Hall.

Indigo did not come to dinner, and Daphne was not speaking to him. But in a way, that made things more peaceful.

****************

There was blood. A thousand cuts. Screaming.

Draco sat bolt upright in bed. His mouth was open in a soundless scream. Cold sweat clung to his face. He wiped it off.

Rain beat heavily against the windows. The illusion of contentment the last few days had given was washed away and showed the unforgiving reality underneath. The images of the dream played over again in his head. It was the scene of Evra Tome's murder all over again, only he was standing directly in front her, and she was staring into his eyes when the cuts opened and blood poured out, and then Evra was Hermione, and then Hermione was dead, lying on the ground, and then Evra Tome had come up before him, her face mangled with the cuts and grabbed his shoulders, her eyes bore into his with accusation or warning or...it hardly mattered. It was a dream, but one that quite understandably upset him. He felt the tears well up in his eyes.

I can't cry here, he thought. Not here. They'll hear me. Still, he knew he was going to cry. The tears were already threatening to overflow his eyes lids. Some part of his brain knew that it was healthy to cry. He had seen something terrible, life altering, horrific. Parts of himself were lost. Evra Tome was dead, and these things were things that should be mourned. But not here, not in this dorm where the other boys might hear. There was no shame in private tears, but he could not stand to explain his tears to the others, nor was he in a state to concoct elegant lies.

He slipped out of bed as silently as he could and made his way out in the darkness. He had no idea of the exact hour, but it was late enough the common room should be empty. He was trembling. He tried to take consolation in the fact no one could see him, but he felt hopelessly lonely.

There was a low fire, barely more than embers. He would have sunk into the chair directly in front of it, but someone was already there, so he slipped into another slightly to the side.

Persephone was staring into the fire. Thomas Dey was curled on her lap, his head on her shoulder, sleeping, and she held him like a very large baby.

"Why are you up?" Draco asked in a voice just above a whisper.

"You're not the only one who has nightmares," she said, her eyes on Thomas. Draco could only see the boy's back. He knew it was Dey from the size and the coloring. Draco could remember being very small and curling into his mother's arms, and this opened a fresh ache in him. It was so childish to miss his mother.

"He's eleven years old, for Pete's sake," Draco said, lacing his tone with disgust. It was unfair, he knew, because he was he would have liked to be where Thomas was. Obviously, he was too big to sit in Persephone's lap, if Thomas was not such a small eleven year old he could not have managed it, but it would be nice to lay his head there and feel arms soothing him.

"He's had it rough," Persephone said, still watching the fire. She looked very sad and serious, very adult. Draco sat still, willing his heart rate to return to normal. Perfunctorily he ran his hand through his hair to give it some order. "Look at this," she said and gingerly pulled up the edge of Thomas's pajama top to expose his back. The dark skin was crossed with lighter colored stripes, slightly raised. Draco was not sure what they were, but they made him even more uncomfortable.

"Those are cane marks," she told him. Her expression was very distant, and Draco did not want to ask her how she knew. "There are some on his legs too." She put Thomas's shirt back down. She looked back at the fire, and for a moment Draco thought she was going to start crying, but she blinked back her tears. "Makes your problems not seem so bad by comparison. My Papa was always so good to me."

Draco had been spanked on occasion when he was younger, but his father had never struck him with enough fury to leave marks like that. He wondered if his father would really kill him if Voldemort ordered it or would he just stand by and watch him die.

Persephone was looking at him, and Draco realized with some horror that she was expecting him to know something. "What should we do?"

"I don't know," Draco said.

"But you're a prefect," she said. Draco wondered if she had looked the same way and said the same words to his father, and he wondered if it had made his father feel as completely helpless and equally determined not to show it.

"I mean it's too late to do anything tonight," he amended. "It's best to just let him sleep now." I don't know what to do. Stop looking at me like that. I don't know what to do.

"Okay," she said. She tried to shift Thomas. "Could you take him up to bed?"

Draco felt a little strange gathering Thomas up. He seemed smaller in Draco's arms than he had in Persephone's. Persephone stroked Thomas's hair lovingly. For a moment, Draco felt like they were playing at being mother and father. Her eyes turned to his face, mingled faith and concern. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded. It seemed wrong somehow to show his weakness when he was holding someone so small, and she was depending on him.

"You go to bed too," he told her. Persephone did not argue with him.

They climbed their separate staircases. Draco murmured "Lumos", and his wand, muted by his pocket, gave off enough light for him to see the way into the first years dorm room and find the empty bed. He laid Thomas down and covered him with the blankets. Thomas rolled onto his side without waking and looked very peaceful. Draco returned to his own room. He fell asleep without crying.