Montane Hope

Chapter 4 (of 16)

The castle was quiet, very quiet, later that night. Draco was sure Potter and Longbottom could hear his heart beating as they waited. However hard he tried, he couldn't stop his hands trembling. Both the others appeared as calm as if they were going for a walk down to the lake in broad daylight. He tried the visualisation thing to clear his mind, but with no better results than last time. It was most distracting, trying to stop thinking and discovering that a certain young lady and her pug-faced cat absolutely refused to be tidied away.

"She's not coming," he said finally. Potter stirred under the cloak. Longbottom was leaning uncomfortably against Draco's shoulder.

"I think you're right," said Potter. 'We'd better go." They walked carefully on the grass, so as not to make a sound. I can't believe I'm doing this. On Halloween; anything could be about.

"Harry!" The game-keeper's large form moved swiftly towards them. Fangs whined by his side, his nose was tied with a piece of soft cloth so that he couldn't bark. "Though' I'd meet you here, Aragog, ain't ever happy 'bou' waiting."

As they entered the forest they removed the cloak and Potter laid it carefully in a tree. "Wha's he doin' here," demanded Hagrid, seeing Draco. "Where're Ron an' Hermione."

"It's all right," whispered Potter. "Ron's having a sleep, and Hermione didn't turn up."

Longbottom's eyes were round and Draco suspected he wasn't as keen on the forest as Potter and Hagrid seemed to be. "The girls had a little surprise planned for Miss Granger," he told Potter. Potter looked suspiciously at him, but he said no more. They'd find out soon enough. If he hadn't been here he half thought he might have been somewhere near the Astronomy tower, waiting to see what happened.

Deep in the forest the three of them, and Fangs, stopped in a clearing. Hagrid had left them a moment before. Draco heard Longbottom make a small sound, almost a whimper, and looked up, a taunt ready on his lips. The remark died unsaid as he saw several spiders approach, the heavy black bodies pendulous between their long, clicking legs. Less than eight feet from the students they stopped, leaving a gap. Draco glanced behind him, finding to his relief that they weren't completely surrounded. Not that that would make much difference. Draco had pet spiders at home - he'd had several over the years - and he knew how fast they could move when they wanted to. He fixed his eyes straight ahead, on the gap in the circle where the spiders had shuffled aside to let another through, not even thinking to gloat at the fact that Longbottom was now trembling so much he could hear his teeth chattering. The spider advancing on them from behind its mates was larger than any of the others, larger than a horse. Draco could see its eight eyes gleaming, the short stubby palps pulsating six feet above the ground. Three feet off the ground the jaws hung, and Draco observed the sharp fangs that nearly met at the points. The bristles over the eyes were as thick as wire.

No-one got a bigger fright than Draco when this monster spoke, but the words were nothing out of the ordinary. "Where is Hagrid?" the animal asked. Just what you would expect one of Hagrid's pets to say.

Potter replied in simple phrases, as if talking to a child, "He is coming. He is bringing food, and we have the potion."

As if on cue, Hagrid arrived with a large beast on his shoulder - a dead bull, Draco surmised. He laid it down and set to chopping it into tiny pieces with an axe. When he was done, Longbottom stepped forward, still shaking, pulled out a tin and paintbrush from under his robes and painted each lump of meat with the bright blue potion. Potter pulled Draco forward, handing him an identical tin and brush.

"What's all this for," he asked.

"It's medicine. Aragog's children are sick."

"That was Aragog? The great lump that spoke?" The spider hissed, and Hagrid chuckled.

"Ye've no' learnt yer lesson yet Draco. I'd have though' efter Buckbeak ye'd know better."

When every piece of meat had been covered in the potion Hagrid took Harry and Neville's hands and drew them back out of the clearing. Draco and Fangs followed. The spiders clicked their jaws, and behind them the noise was like a rushing river, although Draco, looking back, saw that after each spider approached the meat it left the clearing completely, without rushing or pushing.

"Harry, are you crazy or what?" Draco demanded as soon as they left the forest. Harry grinned. He hadn't shown the least sign of fear all evening and Draco suddenly realised that he'd unintentionally used his first name. They collected the invisibility cloak and started to walk back. Draco was sure it was after midnight, and hoped he'd manage to sleep the rest of the night. Merlin knew, he could do with it. They were almost at the castle when they heard a scream. Harry was out from under the cloak and gone so fast that he was almost out of sight before Draco gathered his wits. He and Neville followed more slowly, jogging in the direction the noise had come from.

When they arrived at the bottom of the Astronomy tower Granger was kneeling under a low window, showing Harry her scraped knee. She looked tired, her face streaked with mud - or something. "They've got my wand," she was saying. Inside the tower a girl giggled.

Harry whispered something to her, and jumped through the open window. Granger looked up at Draco, her eyes blank as if she didn't really see him. Close up her hair was tousled and she looked even more tired. "You take her back to the castle," he said to Neville, as he jumped through the window after Harry.

"Draco," he heard almost immediately. It was barely more than a whisper. He turned round to see Lisa crouching behind a statue just down the corridor. She was crying. He pulled her to her feet.

"Go. Now. If I catch you here... you weren't here, remember!"

She gave him a frightened look, and ran. Harry was already well up the stairway, and Draco followed. Reaching the first landing, he found Harry with his wand out, covering two of the girls. "There's two more ahead," he called to Draco. Draco heard their feet scampering on the stone floor as they ran, and took a deep breath before he sprinted up the next thirty steps. They turned on him but he already had his wand out, and their wands flew harmlessly through the air towards him before they could hex him.

"Where's Pansy," he demanded when he had brought the twins downstairs, and they were all together on the first landing. Harry gave him a sharp look. Parvati shrugged.

Draco lost his temper. "I know she was with you. The four of you deserve to be expelled. That was disgusting behaviour. At the very least, you should all serve a week's worth of detentions. Hogwarts is a respectable school - it is not a place where students form gangs to break the rules and bully other students. You will all wait right there." He turned and walked down the stairs with Harry. Behind him he heard Su Li whisper, "is he going to get a teacher? Can we really be expelled for this?"

"Look, Harry," he said. Harry looked at him quizzically. "My hands are tied on this. I could go right now and fetch McGonagall or Snape, and I would be out of here. I'm on my last warning, prefect or not, if I'm caught breaking the rules I'll be sent home along with those girls." Draco looked him in the eyes. "This is your decision. Granger's your friend. If you want to turn them in, that's fine, I'll go and get that teacher."

"My call, huh?" Harry didn't break eye contact, a situation Draco was finding very uncomfortable. After a minute he handed Draco five of the wands he was carrying. "You'd better give them back. I believe the damaged one might be Miss Pansy's." He turned and walked swiftly away.

* * * * *

Why exactly had Potter saved him that day? If he'd said the right word, he could have had Draco expelled. The girls would probably have been let off with detentions. For most of them it was the first time they'd been caught breaking the rules - and Granger really wasn't that well liked outside of Gryffindor House. And why had he gone running after them in the first place, he could have let well alone. It wasn't to save Lisa, he'd spoken some pretty harsh to her the next day. That wasn't necessary, she'd been too distracted to attend to her practise and had started crying as soon as he mentioned their Halloween pranks.

He stopped against a tree, and watched a tiny spider crawling up his arm. For some strange reason the encounter with Aragog and his family had not turned him against spiders - he still thought they were beautiful.

Moving on again, he picked his way over tree roots and up worn, muddy steps, rarely glancing up at the heights of the trees towering over him. It was beginning to feel cold. The vines seemed to weave nets around him. The undergrowth was dense. He looked at the black strands, thicker than his wand, weaving and tumbling among the trees. What am I doing here?

His thoughts started to race, and he sat on a tree root while he tried to organise them. I am a dark wizard, in a dark place. He looked up. The very tops of the trees were light and golden.

This is safe, they told me it was safe. He looked around, but the darkness was forbidding and oppressive. There was a whirring sound as a large bird flew overhead, crashing heavily from tree to tree. He couldn't understand it. He got up and went on. The wood doesn't want me here. As he walked, this awareness crept further into his bones. The plants themselves are not dead and empty, it is their spirits I can feel. He shuddered, but walked on. Such a place is safe for those who are pure in heart. Am I pure in heart? He had to sit down again to think about this.

* * * * *

"Malfoy." It was Potter. Draco stopped and turned aside as the other students hurried past.

"Hermione's OK. She's not going to report. I just thought you should know."

"Thanks." Draco was very relieved. For the past few hours he'd been wondering if Granger would report the incident, deciding that she almost certainly would. Then Snape would find out that he, Draco, had been there. He'd half expected to be expelled by evening. Taking the opportunity, he asked the other question that had been on his mind all day. "Potter, what's going on with those spiders? I mean, feeding them, I didn't think you lot were that loopy." Potter furrowed his brow and turned aside, opening the door of a classroom. Once inside he sat on a desk, Draco sat on the one opposite.

"It's like I said. They're sick."

"So?"

"We're helping them. Dumbledore says we should be kind to the Dark Creatures."

"Dumbledore knows you're sneaking out of the castle at night?"

Potter shook his head. 'Dumbledore knows many things - but I don't believe he knows that."

"This isn't part of... Do you think you're going to win the war against You-Know-Who by feeding giant spiders?"

"Why would that interest you? I understood you were on the - ah, other side." Potter looked directly at him, so that Draco felt like squirming again. He didn't know what to answer. Eventually he decided as a representative of the Malfoy family he should be diplomatic. He shrugged his shoulders. Harry's mouth twitched, but Draco decided, just this once, he wasn't going to challenge him for irreverent thoughts.

"In that case," said Potter, "the answer is yes. We do believe it will help. At least Dumbledore does."

"And you just hang on everything that Muggle-lover says, don't you? It's not surprising, with Mudblood and the Weasel for friends." Draco would have left after delivering that insult - he didn't honestly care who the famous Harry Potter chose for his friends - but curiosity made him stay.

"Dumbledore has been right in everything so far, Malfoy. If he wasn't I would have died in front of the mirror of Erised."

"That really happened then?"

"Did you think it didn't?" That was exactly what Draco had thought. Everyone in the school had been talking about it at the time, but not one of the adults would say anything. Why spiders? How does he think they're going to help him?

"Is it only spiders you lot are helping?" Draco asked, curious. Potter shook his head.

"Sorry Malfoy, that's more than I can tell you. As you say - there is a war on and the last person I would trust would be..."

"Yeah, I get the message," Draco drawled. He stood up and left without a backwards glance.

*

Pansy was in trouble. First pink steam had whistled from her wand, then it had burst into flame. Draco flicked his wand and doused the fire with a stream of water.

"Oh - Bloody Hell! Stop laughing you morons," she moaned, tears streaming down her soot-blackened face. "Just look at this mess." She threw the wand on the floor and stalked out. Professor Flitwick's squeaky voice pulled the class' attention back to him. They were learning air-writing, which he assured them had great purpose in achieving the control needed in conjuring such things as pumpkin juice, sugar and small animals from their wands. Draco sent a small stream of spiders scuttling out of his wand, while he was talking, then scooped them up before any-one noticed. He'd mastered that spell years ago. He quietly moved his chair back and picked up Pansy's wand.

The wand was black with soot. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped it clean, then tried the spider spell. Nothing happened. He concentrated harder and a single spider walked out of the end of the wand. While Flitwick talked, he tried simple spells, all of them taking an excessive amount of concentration. I wonder if that's why she's so bad-tempered. He folded a scrap of parchment into an airplane and chucked it at Blaise. The answer came back a minute later. No. Blaise had never swapped wands with Pansy. He scribbled an instruction below the answer and sent the plane back.

*

After dinner Draco returned to the common room to find that all the sofas had turned bright pink, there was a huge yellow sun hanging in the middle of the ceiling and Pansy was lying on the floor giggling. The younger students looked confused and even a little frightened. Blaise caught his eye and winked, while Pansy sent a stream of bumble bees into the air. They gathered in a cloud and headed for Crabbe and Goyle. Goyle fainted and Crabbe left the common room hurriedly, while Elddir looked slightly amused as the bees popped gently and vanished.

"I'm scared," said Blaise, as Draco approached. "Really scared."

Draco's eyes sparkled with good humour. "I thought something like this might happen - after I tried to use that wand. Whose wand was it?" he asked Pansy.

"My grandmother's - oh... look at this." She had levitated a sofa. Several of the first years scrambled for the door.

"Uh, Pansy dear," said Blaise, nervously. Aside to Draco he whispered, "I don't think this was a good idea. I've never seen power like that. When she first picked up my wand she knocked a hole in the ceiling and nearly flooded the entire dungeon. Lucky she was able to fix it."

Draco crouched beside her on the floor and used his own wand to conjure snow and butterflies till he got fed up - long before Pansy had given up. "Here Pansy,' he said eventually. "You'd better take your wand and give Blaise his back. We'll get you a new one for Christmas." Pansy reluctantly let go of the wand, then jumped up and kissed Draco, knocking him onto his back. Blaise helped him up.

"If I didn't know why she'd done that," said Blaise, "I'd be challenging you to a duel."