Worser Angels

Chapter Seven

Back at Hogwarts

They appeared in Dumbledore's office. Draco stumbled, but Snape held him upright. "I thought," he began. He wasn't sure what he thought, but he settled on, "that you couldn't apparate into Hogwarts."

"Ordinarily, you can't," Snape answered.

Draco almost wished they hadn't. He had gone from playing cards with Jenna and Cyril to Dumbledore's office in less than five minutes A longer journey would have given him a chance to collect himself. As it was, his thoughts hadn't quite kept up.

Dumbledore waved him and Snape to seats and gave them tea and biscuits, which helped. "So....Mr. Malfoy. You're back with us."

He nodded. "Looks like it."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, thank you." He looked over at Snape. "What happened to you?"

"I didn't know where you were."

"I meant--you said you were all right now. What happened? I gather we encountered some Death Eaters--the muggles said I was raving about them--"

Snape cut him off. "I just meant I was worried," he said icily.

"Oh."

"You don't remember what happened?"

"No."

Snape explained what he knew, finishing, "I should have stayed with you, of course. I haven't had to think of anyone's safety but my own for--for the last week I've thought my own self-absorption killed you."

"Hardly self-absorption, Severus," Dumbledore said mildly. "Your work for the Order has saved countless lives."

"Yes, well." Severus looked like he had eaten something bitter.

"And Malfoy's back, safe and sound."

"Thanks to the Grangers," Snape sneered.

"I couldn't think of anyone else who had a telephone," Draco said defensively.

"That was very clever of you," Snape allowed.

"And brave." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled.

"Not a bit sneaky, was it?" Draco sighed. "I suppose I'll have to thank them."

"Yes, you will." Dumbledore sounded like he wouldn't welcome any argument.

"And I told them I'd make it up to Hermione somehow. For...well. The last four years. Wonder how I'll manage that?"

"You could start by apologizing," Dumbledore suggested.

"She'll spit in my face!"

"Mm." Dumbledore sipped his tea.

"I'll do it," he said resignedly.

#

Back in the Slytherin dormitory, which was empty since all of the students were in class, Draco changed into his robes and took his wand out of the paper bag. "Lumos."

Blue-white light emanated from the end of the wand.

He still had it, then. "Finite Incantatem." Pocketing his wand, he drifted down to the common room, where she shuffled a deck of someone's Exploding Snap cards absently.

Soon--too soon--some students galloped into the common room. He was used to the languid movements of the muggle lunatics. Healthy, active young witches and wizards seemed like they were speeded up and on high volume.

"So it's true." Goyle stopped a few feet short of him. "You're back."

"Uh-huh." He moved automatically into a defensive stance.

"Came crawling back."

"Apparated, actually."

"You should've stayed with the muggles," Zabini said.

"Funny, soon as I saw you I started thinking the same thing." He was out of practice with this kind of verbal sparring. More, in the weeks since his father's death and disgrace he'd hardened himself to their taunts and hatred. His time in the asylum had stripped away those defenses and left him wanting, absurdly, to explain to his Housemates that their behavior was not very supportive.

Why had he wanted to come back? He'd at friends at the hospital. Here everyone hated him.

It was a muggle hospital. He was a wizard. He belonged here.

Besides, his friends at hospital were mad. Gaining the friendship of a bunch of muggle nutters wasn't exactly something to be proud of.

Pansy was talking to him. "--Stinking blood traitor. When the Dark Lord--"

"You don't know. Anything. About the Dark Lord."

Smiling wickedly, she pushed back the sleeve of her robes and showed him the Dark Mark.

He recoiled. "You stupid, little bitch. You don't even know what you've done, do you?"

"I've joined the right side. I'm not a traitor to my own kind."

Draco stood up. Goyle and Schott, a 4^th-year, were standing in front of the door, but he barreled between them and left.

He knew where Snape lived, even though he'd never been there. Running through the corridors, he skidded to a halt outside the door. "Professor!" He banged on the door. "Snape! It's me."

Snape opened the door. "Merlin's beard, child. What's wrong?"

"Let me in." He couldn't stand in the corridors talking about this.

Snape hesitated, then stepped back. "Come in, then."

Snape' sitting room was spare and dark, lit only by a few torches. Snape lit a candelabra and gestured for Draco to sit down at the scrubbed wooden table. From the scorch marks and stains, it looked like he used it for potions experiments more often than he did for meals. "What is it?" he asked again.

"Pansy's a Death Eater."

"I know."

"Oh." He slumped in his chair. "But--Pansy?"

"Nott, Zabini, and Crabbe, as well. Tuesday last."

"Oh."

"I ought to have mentioned it to you, but it slipped my mind."

"Why didn't you stop them?"

"How? I told them it was difficult and dangerous. I told the Dark Lord they were just schoolchildren, they couldn't trusted, relied upon. But all four of them are third-generation Death Eaters. Their families pressed for them to be inducted. They were only too eager to join up."

"But they're just kids."

"I know."

"They'll be killed."

"I realize that," Snape said testily. "You think I don't know that?"

"I'm sorry," Draco apologized. "I was just...surprised."

"As was I."

"I guess my father died just in time." If his classmates were being recruited, surely Lucius would have had Draco Marked before anyone else his age.

"I wouldn't have let him have you." Snape sounded sure.

"How would you have stopped him?"

"I don't know, but I would have."

A horrible thought occurred to him. "You didn't--did you have something to do with his death?" With contacts on both sides, Snape would have been in an ideal position to arrange for a Death Eater to be killed by the Ministry.

"I didn't, but I might have done it if had seemed necessary."

Draco believed him. "Why--" He thought of the conversation he'd overheard in Dumbledore's office. It raised more questions than it answered, but he couldn't ask them outright without admitting he'd been eavesdropping. "Why do you care so much what happens to me?"

Snape stared into the candle flames. Draco thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he said, "I've had to sacrifice almost everything that matters to this war. My family, my name, my reputation, honesty, peace, safety. Others have given almost as much, but they have the compensations of honor, acclaim, comradeship. But winning this war won't be worth it if I have to give up everything. One has to draw a line. I'm a spy, not a...." He trailed off. "Perhaps I'm just trying to do what a decent person would."

"But--"

"When the Dark Lord has something to prove, he doesn't kill everyone in arm's reach, he makes an example of someone. I've chosen to make an example of you."

Draco wasn't quite keeping up. "To prove what?"

"That I can still care about something."

"Oh." But that didn't quite answer his real question. "Why me? Why not Pansy, or Goyle, or--"

"I've known you since you were an infant."

"I don't think I understand."

"It's nothing untoward, I assure you," Snape said coolly.

Draco didn't catch his meaning for a moment. When he did, he yelped, "I didn't think--"

"Good. We should go up to dinner."

"Oh, right." He wasn't looking forward to it.

"Don't forget about Granger."

He wasn't looking forward to that, either.

#

When Draco reached the Slytherin table, he hesitated. He didn't want to sit down and break bread with them. Not with Death Eaters. They had probably killed muggles already. Muggles like his friends.

"Blood traitor."

"Muggle-lover."

"Don't sleep tonight, traitor."

Snape descended on them, grabbed his collar, and shoved him at the Gryffindor table.

He stumbled, giving the potions master a very convincing dirty look over his shoulder. He couldn't see why Snape couldn't warn him when he was about to do something like that.

"Sit with your own sort, then," he said, giving Draco another shove.

Cover.

With an air of wounded dignity, he took a seat next to Longbottom, who was sitting with the rest of his year.

"What's his problem?" Longbottom wanted to know.

What could he say? "Pansy Parkinson's joined You-Know-Who," He said. She had been stupid enough to tell him herself; he couldn't be expected to keep her secrets. "Maybe some others, too. Guess he doesn't want someone like me associating with them." Potter--and anyone else he'd spilled Snape's secret to--would know what he really meant. The others could think Draco wasn't counted worth of sitting near Voldemort's elite.

Granger gasped. "You have to tell Dumbledore."

"He knows." Snape would have told the Headmaster.

While he was talking to Granger, he might as well get it over with. "Uh, Granger," he began.

"Yes?" she asked coldly.

"About, uh...I was a real pillock before. I'm sorry. For what it's worth."

"Not much," Weasley commented.

Draco shrugged. "I know. I promised your parents I'd make it up to you, but I haven't figured out how yet." He thought she might have some idea, and hoped they weren't too awful.

"I can't believe you had the nerve to call my parents."

"I was desperate," he said candidly. "And I was counting on them--" showing true Gryffindor idiocy "--being big enough to look past the was I've acted. They're good people."

"I know," she said.

"Yes, of course."

The food came, and for a while the only conversation was requests for dishes to be passed. Draco was keenly aware of every eye in the Hall on him. Then Neville said, "Is it true you were in a muggle insane asylum?"

At hospital, they'd talked about what to say, back at school, about where they'd been. The doctors counseled telling the truth. Being in psychiatric hospital was, they claimed, nothing to be ashamed of. "Yes," he said tersely.

"What was that like?"

Longbottom's parents, he remembered, had had their wits destroyed by the Cruciatus Curse. "It wasn't all that bad."

Weasley seemed drawn in despite himself. "Were they like Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle?"

"I wouldn't know." Father hadn't allowed any comics, much less ones with Muggle characters. "But I doubt it. They were just kids like us."

"Only nutters," Weasley muttered.

"Ron," Hermione said, with a glance at Neville. "That isn't very nice."

"They weren't actually mad, most of them. Just...troubled. There was one kid who heard voices. Nice bloke, though."

Stunned silence. "You actually had a muggle friend?" Weasley asked.

"Several, actually."

"How did that happen?"

He shrugged. "You remember how on our first day McGonagall said our Houses would be like families here at Hogwarts? It's sort of like that. You can't help but be friends with people when you're thrown together like that." His House had turned out to be a little bit too much like his family, but that wasn't what Ron had asked.

"I meant, Why on earth did they put up with you?"

"My smashing good looks."

It took the Gryffindors a moment to realize he'd made a joke. Draco, accustomed to sycophantic hysterics from his erstwhile Housemates, was a bit hurt.

"Modest, ain't he?" Thomas, the muggle-born boy, asked.

"A lot of things have changed, but I still own a mirror."

Ron looked embarrassed. "Oh, yeah. I didn't know, when I said that about your house, that it wasn't true."

"Neither did I."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Granger said, "Well?"

"What?"

"Don't you owe him an apology, too?"

Draco wasn't sure he did. "I was a little bit out of my head," he hedged.

"You got that right," Weasley muttered.

"And it stopped the other Slytherins trying to kill me." That was a Slytherin answer. A Malfoy answer. The ends justify the means.

"Were they really--" Longbottom asked.

"Yes. They tried to beat me to death the night I came back from testifying to the Ministry." That was a little overdramatic. "Well, Madame Pomfrey said I could have died. I don't know what they had in mind."

"Really?" Potter asked. "We all thought you just got what you had coming."

Draco shrugged. "The Dark Lord would probably agree with you," he said nastily.

Potter looked stung, but recovered quickly. "Why did you...change sides, anyway? If that's what you've done," he added suspiciously.

"I haven't. I was never a follower of the Dark Lord." That was the truth, but not the whole truth. "You've seen him. You know what he's like."

Potter nodded slowly, remembering.

"Can you imagine having that 'round for dinner? Besides, his followers have a nasty habit of turning up dead."

"So that's all it is. You're not really on our side, you're just out to save your own skin." Potter sounded more self-satisfied than anybody had a right to be.

Draco was confused. "What's the difference?"

"What's the difference? The difference is--he killed my parents!"

Did everything have to come back to that? "Mine too," Draco said quietly. "After a fashion."

"It's not the same."

"Yeah, yours got to be heroes out of the deal."

"You bastard--" Potter stood up and drew his wand.

Granger grabbed the back of his robes. "Harry, sit down. He has a point, you know."

Harry sat, still fuming.

"I do?" Draco asked. That she agreed with him was enough to make him rethink his whole position.

"Yes. A lot of us--not you, Harry, but a lot of students--support Dumbledore over Voldemort because they want to live, not because they understand the larger issues."

Draco had a sneaking suspicion she was calling him stupid, but he decided not to call her on it. "As my father's son, I don't have the option of being apolitical. But that doesn't mean I have to turn myself into a big fat target. I just want to play Quidditch, pass my N.E.W.T.s, and, yes, not get killed. Modest goals, but mine own." The doctors had talked a lot about goals. He'd never written any down--the first two would have made no sense to the muggles, the last would have made him look like a paranoid case--but he had made his list in his head, realizing that his old goals--make Father proud and wind up Potter--were, in that order, irrelevant and childish.

"Thought you were off the Quidditch team," Weasley pointed out.

He had forgotten. "Right."

"They haven't been the same since you left," Longbottom said. "They lost the Slytherin-Hufflepuff match last weekend."

"Really? How...satisfying." His erstwhile Housemates would have been humiliated. Losing to Hufflepuff. "Tell me everything," he requested. "All the details."

To his surprise, Neville did.

#

After dinner, Snape stopped him on his way to the dormitory. "Not so fast."

"What?" He couldn't have detention again; the two weeks had been up before he left.

Snape dragged him to a side passage, out of earshot of the rest of the House. "You're staying in the Hospital Wing for the present."

"I am? Why?"

"Because there's a decent chance Crabbe and Zabini are thinking--and I use the term loosely--of killing you in your sleep."

"Oh, come on." They couldn't really. Would they?

Snape glowered at him.

"If you insist."

His trunk and other belongings had been removed to the Hospital Wing. Professor Snape insisted on checking everything to make sure no one had set any booby traps. Draco thought this precaution unnecessary until Snape found a Boil Hex on a pair of his underpants; then he let him get on with it. When he'd finished, he took a roll of parchment out of his pocket. "I'm sure you will be surprised to find that lessons have continued in your absence. I've taken the liberty of copying down all of your assignments."

"Gosh, thanks." He looked over the list. He had long essays to write in every subject, as well as an Arithmancy problem set. Too bad he wasn't taking Muggle Studies; he could probably have gotten extra credit for field work. "But you don't really care if I do this essay on 18^th century healing philtres, do you?"

"Only if you don't really care if you fail Potions for this term."

He hadn't really thought it would work. "I'd better get to the library, then."

"Indeed." Snape hesitated. "Welcome back."

"Thanks. And for...you know...rescuing me and stuff."

Snape executed a half-bow. "You're quite welcome."