Worser Angels

Chapter Three

Quidditch

Draco's detentions weren't so bad. He learned a lot of interesting spells for restoring portraits, and Snape kept him late enough that he didn't get back to the dormitory until the rest were asleep.

The attacks--verbal and physical--tapered off. Clearly getting a reputation as a lunatic had its advantages. But that didn't mean anyone had to be nice to him, and after a week of being completely ignored by everyone, the loneliness was began getting to him. It was surprising how much he noticed not having anyone to talk to.

Snape and Dumbledore would surely listen if he wanted serious conversation, but they were both busy men. He could hardly expect them just to chat. Or to laugh with him when Longbottom fell on his face in Transfiguration, or share the thrill when one of the Patil girls flew upside down on her broom and showed her knickers.

Crabbe and Goyle hadn't exactly been bosom buddies, but at least he hadn't been alone.

He took to imagining himself into the conversations of students around him, just to feel a little bit less lonely. Twice he caught himself with his mouth open, about to actually speak out loud, but managed to stop himself before any sound came out.

Friday's detention came and, since they had finished with the History corridor Thursday evening, he joined Snape in the Potions room.

"I'm making Deflating Draft tonight. First-years are doing Swelling Solution on Monday, so we're sure to need it. You can chop those roots."

Malfoy took a knife and started chopping. "Quarter-inch dice, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right."

After he'd chopped a while he said, "Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff game's this weekend, isn't it?"

"Yes. Shouldn't be very interesting. Hufflepuff, you know." Snape put down the beaker he was measuring into. "It's Wyntre," he said.

"Huh?"

"Slytherin's new seeker."

"Oh." He hadn't even given his Quidditch position a moment's thought. Among all the things he'd lost, it didn't loom large. "Suppose I missed lots of practices."

"Yes. I ought to have dragged you down there and made them kick you off the team to your face."

"Father would have done," he agreed.

Snape winced. "Just as well I didn't, then, perhaps."

"Yeah. I've finished with these roots. Should I quarter the beetle's eyes?"

"Yes, do. About four ounces of them."

He found the eyes in the cupboard, weighed them, and started cutting. It was fiddly work. "I don't suppose there's any way I can go to the game."

"Hm? No, it wouldn't be safe."

"That's what I thought," he said, disappointed. It wasn't going to be one of the world's great Quidditch matches--but he still wanted to go.

"I suppose you could sit in the staff box," Snape said, adding things to a cauldron with grim concentration.

"Could I?"

"Dumbledore will have to give permission. Shouldn't be a problem."

"Okay. Great. Thanks," he said hurriedly. Snape didn't seem too happy about the idea, and Draco didn't want to give him any excuse to change his mind.

#

"It would look like we're rewarding him for breaking rules." McGonagall, of course.

"Minerva, I doubt any of the other children want to sit with us. They'd rather be with their friends," Professor Sprout said practically.

Poppy frowned. "None of the rest of you saw him after the rest of those--after he was attacked. He was very badly hurt. I doubt he'd be safe sitting with his House, and it wouldn't be fair to punish him because the other students might attack him."

"He also attacked other students," McGonagall reminded them.

"And he's being punished for that," Snape ground out. Why on earth had he brought this up in a faculty meeting, instead of privately with Dumbledore? "If you thought he ought to be confined to the castle on weekends as well, you should have suggested it at the time."

"Would it satisfy everyone if we allow Mr. Malfoy to attend the match, but make him and Severus sit in the seats behind the pillar, where they won't be able to see everything?" Dumbledore suggested, with a twinkle in his eye.

It was agreed that the plan was acceptable.

#

Draco had often gone to Quidditch matches with his father; it was one of the only things they did together.

He had planned on making his father proud of him by making the House team, but Lucius had stolen that from him by buying his way onto the team. Those stupid broomsticks.

He and Severus took their seats. Not very good ones. Another example of what Hogwarts did to Death Eaters, he supposed.

"Hufflepuff needs to beat Ravenclaw by at least ten points," he said.

"Or what?"

"Or we're out of the running for the Cup." He realized now that it was a ridiculous thing to say. He had done the maths automatically, without pausing to think that he no longer cared whether Slytherin won at Quidditch or not.

But Snape just said, "They might be able to do it."

#

Severus felt something tear inside him. Malfoy's instinctive loyalty to a House that wanted him dead was painful to witness.

Slytherins weren't supposed to be loyal, anyway. But he didn't say that, instead he just said, "They might be able to do it."

Malfoy nodded, and the game began.

The first fifteen minutes or so were fast-paced--at least for a Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff game-- with lots of goals and a near-fall when one of the Hufflepuff beaters hit a bludger so hard his broom destabilized and he went into a spin.

Then there was a bit of a lull, and the student who was commentating, said "And in the faculty box, Hogwarts' own junior Death Eater makes a rare public appearance. He's been in detention every night since almost killed Ron Weasley last week. You won't be seeing him on the Slytherin team--now that his father's dead, they don't need to suck up to him anymore."

Draco stood up. "I knew this was a bad idea."

Snape grabbed the back of his robes and pulled him back into his seat. "Sit down and shut up," he growled. "What are they going to think if you run away? Just ignore them."

Draco nodded. "I forgot."

But it was obvious he wasn't having even the small amount of fun he had been before. The rest of the game he sat and watched like a statue.

#

"But it's simple physics," the Granger person was saying. "That's what should happen when somebody floating in midair hits something."

"You're crazy. Have you ever seen someone playing Quidditch go spinning around like that?" Ron asked.

"You have to stabilize--" Draco began.

The Gryffindors turned and started at him.

"Excuse me?" Hermione said.

"Were you talking to us?" Ron demanded.

"Yeah," Longbottom put in, "Were you?"

"Just ignore him," Potter said.

"Let's change seats," Ron said. "Makes it easier to ignore him if he's not eavesdropping."

The did get up and move.

Draco, to his astonished humiliation, felt his eyes starting to prickle. He folded his arms on the desk and put his head down on them before anyone could see him cry, and stayed that way for the rest of the lesson.

McGonagall came in and started the lesson. Draco didn't listen at all; he really couldn't care less how to turn teapots into badgers or whatever it was today. Everyone hated him, and he really ought to just go up to the Astronomy tower and throw himself into the courtyard. If he couldn't make it through a week without humiliating himself, his life wasn't going to be worth shit anyway.

"Malfoy, are you sleeping in my class?"

He could feel her breathing on him, but he didn't look up. Maybe she'd think he was dead.

"He's not asleep, Professor." Crabbe.

"Then what's wrong with him?"

"He's crying."

The rest of the class laughed.

"That will do!" McGonagall said sharply. "Miss Parkinson, let's see your wand technique."

Class went on without him, and when it finally ended they all left, and McGonagall went around picking up people's teapots and setting out matches.

"Malfoy," she said when she got to the back of the room, "My next class will be here in a few minutes. You may go to the hospital wing if you don't feel well enough to go to your next lesson."

He'd half-expected her to pour some sympathy on him. Apparently, however, she'd decided to pretend he was ill instead of distraught.

Once she'd gone back to the front of the room, he tore himself out of his seat and stumbled out into the corridor. He blundered through a sea of first-years, vaguely aware that they were gaping at him, open-mouthed.

Once he got free of them, he wondered where to go. Not the hospital wing, of course. What would he tell Madame Pomfrey was wrong with him?

She hated him too, anyway.

He couldn't go to Snape's place, either. He would be teaching anyway, and he'd just remind Draco that he'd let them win by showing so much weakness. Snape was a lot like Father that way.

That left the Astronomy tower.

Except he really was scared to die, too, he thought as he started up the steps. No one knew what happened if you died and didn't become a ghost.

And he hated this place, so why would he want to hand around forever, like that pathetic craeture in the girls' lav?

Something slammed against his back, and he yelped and drew his wand.

"Where do you think you're going?" Snape growled.

"Uh..." He stuffed his wand back into his sleeve.

Snape moved his arm from the small of Draco's back to around his shoulders and steered him down the stairs. "Don't be stupid. What do you have next?"

"Arithmancy."

"You should be able to manage that."

He wasn't at all sure.

"I'll tell Professor Vector--"

"Tell him what?" Draco snapped.

"That you're late because we were talking."

"I don't want to go to Arithmancy."

"Then you should've signed up for Muggle Studies," Snape snapped.

"Don't be stupid."

"We ought to require a semester of it for purebloods, I've often thought."

"Really?" Against his will, Draco found himself interested.

"Not an opinion I can express in public, for obvious reasons. But the world's getting smaller; it just isn't possible for our kind to live without coming into contact with muggles. Did you know, if you're in a muggle flat in London, you can make a call on the telephone and have one of them bring you an Indian meal?"

"Really? Wouldn't it get cold?"

"I still haven't figured that part out."

Draco wasn't about to let himself be distracted that easily. They were getting close to Professor Vector's classroom. "I still don't want to go to Arithmancy."

"Well you don't always get what you want in life!"

"You think I don't know that? Merlin's balls, where have you been for the last two weeks?"

"...Yes, that was a stupid thing to say, wasn't it? Well, if you don't go, they'll all realize they've gotten to you."

"They already know that," Draco pointed out.

"Well...Yes...but..." Snape seemed to be at a loss. "You just have to pretend everything's all right."

"Why? What the hell's the point? How can things possibly get any worse?" Fuck it all; he started to cry again.

Snape stood there watching him like he'd grown another head. "Don't be such a crybaby," he snapped.

"Shut up! Just...shut up!" Draco took a swing at him; Snape caught his hand easily.

Malfoys don't cry.

"I get to decide what Malfoys do, I'm the only one left."

"Yes, all right." Snape fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and shoved it at him. "For God's sake, pull yourself together."

Draco mopped his eyes and blew his nose. "Don't you have a class?"

"Yes." He looked around, as if checking to see if anybody was watching. "Come on then, you can sit in my office."

He had won, apparently. He trailed Snape to the Potions classroom, where a bunch of second-years were writing essays, it looked like.

"Just sit in here and do your Arithmancy."

#

"Severus." Minerva's head appeared in his fireplace. "Malfoy just left my room. You'd better come and get him."

"Why? What's he done?"

"He spent the whole lesson with his head on his desk, crying."

Damn the boy. "I'll be right there."

It took him a moment to find Draco, on the steps to the Astronomy tower.

He didn't have Astronomy until Thursday nights.

Could he really be--

Snape threw a protective arm around him, and felt Draco flinch away. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Uh..." Draco stuffed his wand back into his sleeve.

Snape put an arm around his shoulder awkwardly. He was sure he'd been thinking of killing himself, and wanted to tell him it wasn't necessary, that one day he'd be happy again. But he couldn't in any honesty tell him that, so instead he said, "Don't be stupid. What do you have next?"

Draco dropped his eyes. "Arithmancy."

Mostly Ravenclaws, and a good hard class to take his mind off things. "You should be able to manage that. I'll tell Professor Vector--" What To be nice to him? "That you're late because we were talking."

He chattered inanely about Muggle studies, hoping to cheer him up and distract him a little, but when they neared the Arithmancy classroom, Draco pulled away and said, "I still don't want to go to Arithmancy."

"Well," Snape said automatically, "You don't always get what you want in life."

Draco showed he somehow maintained his sense of the ridiculous by saying, "You think I don't know that? Merlin's balls, where have you been for the last two weeks?"

He deserved that. The boy had just had his entire world shattered. That life wasn't fair was not a lesson he stood in desperate need of repeating. "Yes, that was a stupid thing to say, wasn't it? Well. If you don't go, they'll all think they've gotten to you," Snape said with more confidence. Showing them they hadn't affected you was an important thing. Sometimes the only thing.

"They already know that."

Snape wanted to shake him. You didn't admit that, not even to yourself. Otherwise, how could you carry on? "You just have to pretend everything's all right."

"Why?" Draco asked wildly. "What the hell's the point? How can things possibly get any worse?"

Severus was at a loss. Maybe he was right--how would it hurt him? He was already being teased. He had already been beaten up. What more could they do to him, compared to what had already happened?

There had to be a reason. It couldn't just be that hiding his feelings had gotten to be a habit he couldn't break.

Then Draco started to cry.

Snivellus.

"Don't be such a crybaby."

It was perhaps the worst possible thing he could have said, and he knew it.

Crybaby Snivellus Snape. Crybaby, crybaby, crybaby.

"Shut up! Just..." Draco heaved a sob, and then took a wild swing at him. "Shut up."

Snape caught his hand easily. He wanted to say it was all right. Wanted to be able, like Dumbledore did, to simply exude a feeling of peace and calm. To somehow be able to believe that he could cry without the world ending.

"I get to decide what Malfoys do. I'm the only one left."

"Yes, all right." Dumbledore would pat his back and give him a handkerchief.

The handkerchief he could do. But then he heard himself say, "For God's sake, pull yourself together."

Draco did so, and then asked, "Don't you have a class?"

"Yes." Second years, and who knew what they were up to? He'd left an assignment on the board, but the whole place could be up in flames by now.

He didn't have to make Draco go to class. The boy was right, it wouldn't prove anything. "Come on then. You can sit in my office."

He realized he was holding his breath, waiting for the world to end. He wondered if Draco realized what had just happened, that Snape had acknowledged it was all right to show weakness. Or if he just thought he'd whined himself into getting his way as usual.

#

"Are you all right then?" Snape didn't quite look at him.

"Yeah." He shouldn't have cried in front of Snape. Snape was the same kind of man his father was. He hated any sign of weakness.

"Good." He sat down behind his desk. "You realize of course." He stopped.

Draco tensed. "What?"

"Never mind."

Draco turned his attention back to the Arithmancy problem he was working. However hard he tried, he couldn't quite wrap his head around imaginary numbers.

It didn't help that he couldn't keep his mind off what his classmates would say when they saw him next. With afternoon classes over, the whole school would know within an hour.

"I shouldn't have--" Snape said suddenly.

"Shouldn't have what?" Let him skive off Arithmancy, probably. He didn't want to hear it.

"Would you shut up! I'm trying to apologize, you little git!"

"Apologize? What for?" He still wasn't quite sure this wasn't about skipping Arithmancy.

Snape ignored his question. "Just do your work."

"All right. What do you get if you multiply the square root of two by pi?"

"The base of the levitation formula."

"Really?" He looked over his notes.

"Yes."

Draco shrugged and wrote in the answer. "It kept coming up 'a hippopotamus' for me. I knew that couldn't be right."

"Probably you transposed some digits somewhere. That always turns up hippopotamuses."

"Oh." That was the only question in the problem set he hadn't done yet, so he puthis Arithmancy away.

"What did you miss in Transfiguration?"

"Something with teapots. I didn't notice."

"Teapots into marmots, probably. Well, come here, I'll catch you up." Snape found a teapot on one of his shelves and showed Draco the wand movement and incantation. "Marmotosia. Long O," he instructed.

Draco tried it, but the teapot remained stubbornly inanimate.

"Use your wrist, not your elbow. Yes, that's better." The teapot had grown fur and feet and was snuffling across Snape's desk, spout down. "Once more, and hit the last syllable a little harder."

He tried it again, and the teapot appeared fully transformed.

Snape prodded it. "Looks all right. Not even hollow any more. Do change it back; I've no use for a marmot."

"Restorium." The teapot changed back.

Snape glanced inside it and tapped it with his wand. "Scourgify." Then he tapped it again and poured two cups of tea. "Don't have any biscuits," he said cryptically, handing one cup to Draco. "Here, do you want to help me mark the first years' homework?"

Draco was unsure why that would be a treat, but he agreed. Snape handed him a stack of parchment and a bottle of red ink. "Just mark them right or wrong, don't get creative."

Fortunately, Draco remembered all of the answers and didn't have to go looking things up. "This one put 'smells bad' for one of the five properties of valerian."

"Are the other four right?"

"Yes."

"Half credit, I suppose. It does, after all."

He finished marking the homework.

"Thank you," Snape said. "We'd best be going."

"Going?"

"Dinner."

He didn't want to go, but he didn't think Snape was likely to give in again. "I'm not really hungry," he essayed.

"You have to keep your strength up." Snape grabbed the back of his robes and dragged him out of the office.

He let go when Draco seemed to be cooperating. "Now," he said outside of the Great Hall. "I'll be keeping an eye on you. So..."

So don't try to kill anyone? Don't start crying again and embarrass me in front of the others? "Okay," he said.

Snape gave him a little shove in the direction of the Slytherin table. Reluctantly, he walked toward it.

As he passed the Gryffindor table, the Longbottom person got up from the table and blocked his way.

What fresh hell? "What do you want, Longbottom?" he asked wearily.

"I just wanted to tell you--" he glanced nervously at his Housemates, then spoke up, "As far as I'm concerned, you can talk to us if you want to."

The Gryffindors hissed.

"Neville!" Someone said.

"He really did it!" Another one added.

Just terrific. He was reduced to taking charity from Longbottom of all people. In a split second he considered and rejected saying something snaky. He just couldn't carry it off, not after this afternoon.

Instead, he pulled a short cotillion bow and drawled, "Thank you, Longbottom. Perhaps another time."

Longbottom looked surprised he hadn't been killed, but returned Draco's bow and said "All right then," before scurrying back to his seat.

#

"Why did you do that?" Ron demanded.

"Yeah--that's Malfoy, you know," Harry added.

"I should think you'd understand, Harry," Neville said. "After the whole school hated you that time in first year. And that other time in fourth year."

"That's different." Harry said. "We hate him because he's evil."

"Yeah, he's got it coming," Ron put in.

"The Slytherins all hate him now because he and his mum turned against You-Know-Who. Doesn't that sort of make him on our side?" Neville wasn't at all sure.

"He's probably faking it."

"Yeah."

"Well anyway, I meant what I said. I don't care if he talks to us." Neville remembered how they had won that House Cup back in their first year. Sometimes it took more courage to stand up to a friend than to an enemy. This, he thought, was one of those times.

"Yeah, but if he talks to you, he talks to us," Harry pointed out. "And the rest of us don't like him."

"I don't like him either. But if we're mean to him just because we can be, we're no better than his sort." Neville shoved an enormous bite of chicken in his mouth to signal that the conversation was over.

#