Where Angels Fear

Where Angels Fear

Chapter Two

A Journey By Train

That afternoon, after Healer Mallory had finally left, Snape disappeared into his rooms to pack, and "suggested" that Draco do the same. Draco folded up his wheelchair and shoved it in the bottom of his trunk. He had to take it with him, in case of relapse, but planned on doing without it if at all possible. The Professor had dug up a cane for him somewhere--not, he had been relieved to see, decorated with serpents in any form. The wheelchair took up a lot of room, so he left out most of his uniforms and textbooks, reasoning sensibly that he wouldn't need them until he came back to school anyway. Then he remembered summer homework, and squished in a few of his books after all. He had some difficulty getting the lid shut. Maybe Snape would have some room left in his trunk? He leaned hard on the lid, and finally managed to close the latches.

That left his animals. He'd lure Oberon, his owl, into the cage in the morning. Snuffles didn't have a traveling cage, but he thought he could find a suitable box if he asked around. Dobby would know where to get one. And he had a few words to say to Dobby before they left, anyway. Gripping his cane firmly, he stumped toward the school kitchens.

On his previous visits, the kitchen had been bustling with activity, as a swarm of house-elves darted in all directions, preparing the meals and cleaning up afterwards. Now, there was only Dobby and one or two others. Draco supposed the others were off doing other work, since cooking for the handful of people still at the castle couldn't possibly take all their time.

"Master Draco is hungry?" Dobby squeaked, appearing at his elbow. "Dobby is getting Draco some food!"

"No, no, thanks. I just need a box for Snuffy. To take him home in."

"Dobby will get Master Draco a box," Dobby said, his ears dropping slightly. He scampered off, and returned a moment later with a wooden crate, just large enough for Snuffy to turn around in.

"Thanks, this looks perfect." The crate said, "Honeydukes Peppermint Humbugs" on the side, and it still smelled a little of peppermint. Snuffy would probably like that. "Er, we're going back to the Manor tomorrow. Any messages you want me to carry back to, er...?" The Manor had been Dobby's home for a long time, too. Draco was unsure of the exact relationship between Dobby and the two remaining Malfoy house-elves, but he thought they might be his parents.

Dobby was silent for a long moment, then said, "Draco Malfoy can tell Sully and Nobs that Dobby is happy at Hogwarts, and he sends his..." The squeaks voice trailed off, and Dobby flapped his ears anxiously.

"Love?" Draco suggested.

"Regards," Dobby decided.

"All right, I'll tell them. I expect you could visit," he said, as the idea occurred to him, "If it's all right with Dumbledore." Draco wasn't sure how these things worked for house-elves. Let alone freed house elves who were paid wages.

"Dobby cannot do that," he said firmly.

"Are you sure? I mean...Father and Mother are... I'm sure it would be fine."

"Dobby is sure. Dobby thanks Draco Malfoy for the thought."

"Okay. I'll pass along your message."

"Have a good summer, Draco Malfoy."

"You too, Dobby."

#

"How are we getting home?" Draco asked Snape that night at dinner. He should have asked earlier--maybe they were taking a car, in which case he needed to think of ways to convince the Professor to let him drive it.

"The train," he answered.

"Oh." That wouldn't be any fun.

"A muggle train," Snape elaborated, "We missed the Hogwarts Express."

That might not be so bad.

"And you had better behave yourself. I don't want to have to put memory charms on an entire railway carriage."

"I always behave myself," Draco said indignantly.

"Yes, of course you do," the Professor agreed in a tone much smoother than his usual one.

"Where do you usually go during the summers?" Draco decided to change the subject.

"Different places," Snape said--a bit evasively, Draco thought. "I usually take a furnished flat--there's no point buying a house when I'm at Hogwarts ten months of the year."

"I guess not," Draco agreed. The Snape property would have been confiscated roughly the same time that the Professor's parents had been killed by Aurors. The Ministry must have been unusually thorough, not even to leave him a place to live.

"So I've spent summers all sorts of places. Hogsmeade and London, pretty often, but I've stayed in Paris twice, a few different places in Italy, one of the minor Greek islands. It's not been bad."

Draco supposed it didn't sound so bad, but he'd still not take it well if the Ministry had tried to take the Manor away from him--there had been a few weeks last autumn when it had looked like they might.

#

The next morning, they got up early and breakfasted before taking a thestral-drawn carriage to the railway station in the nearest non-magical village. The muggles stared at him. Draco wasn't surprised.

"They're charmed to look like regular horses to muggles," the Professor said, nodding towards the empty spaces where the thestrals were.

That was hardly enough to make their appearance exactly normal. But Snape didn't seem to care. He stepped down from the carriage and glared at the muggles until they looked away in embarrassment. "Get one of those carts for the luggage," he instructed Draco briskly.

Draco limped over to where the carts were. On the way back he hopped onto the back of the cart and used an unobtrusive little charm to steer it.

Back at the carriage, he helped load the trunks, Oberon's cage, and Snuffy's crate onto the cart. He was careful to keep the two animals at opposite ends. Snape went to the ticket window and paid their passage. When he returned he said, "The train's a bit late. We'll have about twenty minutes' wait."

The small train station had only one platform, and a tiny waiting room. All of the muggles had chosen to wait outside, and after sticking his head into the hot, airless room, Draco decided they had good reason. He and Snape sat on the least crowded bench, which was occupied only by an older woman with a wire shopping basket. Oberon screamed at her and beat his wings against the bars of the cage.

"Trust Lucius to get you a racist owl." Snape took off his traveling cloak and threw it over the cage. The muggle woman watched them curiously. She didn't wither under Snape's glare, either.

After a minute or two, he gave up and turned to Draco. "Do you want some food for on the train?" he jerked his head at a newsagents' on the platform.

"I don't have any mugg--banknotes."

The Professor dug in his pocket and handed him a five-pound note. "Get me something that isn't particularly vile."

Draco, who had a passing familiarity with muggle sweets, got some smarties, several mars bars, and a packet each of plain and chocolate biscuits. He pocketed the change and gave Snape the plain biscuits.

"Thanks," Snape said, glancing at them.

"You ferriners?" The old woman at the end of the bench asked suddenly.

Snape looked at her. "Yes," he said shortly. "We're foreign."

She nodded as though that explained everything from Draco's owl to their robes to their arrival via horse drawn carriage. "Where yeh from?"

"Bulgaria," Snape answered crisply, in his very British accent. Draco choked and pressed his sleeve to his mouth to stifle what he was afraid would be an unmanly giggle.

"Yeh've verra gud English."

"Thank you."

"Yeh on yer holidays?"

"Yes."

Draco, having a sudden inspiration, limped back over to the newsagents and bought a London Times, which Snape immediately opened and read, or pretended to read, with rapt absorption.

Draco belatedly discovered that his clever stratagem had protected Snape, but left him entirely undefended. He pretended not to understand the muggle woman's accent, and after a few minutes of conversation that consisted entirely of idiotic smiling and nodding on his part, she left them alone.

When the train at last rattled up, a porter took their trunks and Oberon's cage to stow in the baggage car. He almost took Snuffy, too, but at the last minute Draco grabbed the peppermint crate and tucked it under his arm.

"What's that?" the man asked, eying the air-holes Draco had punched into it suspiciously.

"Teapot," Draco answered. "It's...fragile."

They shouldered their book bags and joined the queue to board the train. Draco had never been on any train but the Hogwarts Express, and was interested to see what a muggle one looked like.

He was a bit disappointed. Thepassenger car was small and shabby. Instead of compartments, there were rows of chairs on either side of a narrow aisle, each one facing the high back of the one in front of it. There wouldn't be much to see except the backs of people's heads. The seats, despite being a different color, material, and shape, reminded him somehow of the day room at Leeds General Infirmary.

"Sit here," Snape told him, when they reached a row that looked just like all the others.

"Go ahead," he suggested. "I want to be on the aisle." He'd be able to see a little more that way.

"No."

His voice was firm enough that Draco didn't argue, but he did ask, "Why?"

"Security."

"It's a muggle train. Who's going to--"

"Humor me."

"Okay," Draco said quickly.

The train moved off. Draco looked out the window for a bit, but quickly realized that the view was nothing new. In fact, the train soon rattled past the place where the Hogwarts Express unloaded the students every September. He looked, but couldn't see the castle from the train.

He craned his neck to try to observe some muggles over the seat back in front of him.

Snape, who had taken a copy of Potions Quarterly out of his bag, hissed, "Why don't you read something?"

"I don't want to," Draco said sullenly.

"Then sit still."

He did. The train stopped at two more towns and Snape took a fountain pen out of his pocket and started writing furiously in the margins of his magazine.

Draco was bored. Painfully bored.

After a while, a group of five teenagers came through the car, laughing and bouncing off the seats as the motion of the train tossed them from side to side. Draco watched them. Lucky children, to be traveling without their schoolmasters. Snape glared at them as they passed by. Draco sighed.

"What were you going to do," Snape growled at him, "Tell them you're foreign?"

"I know," Draco said. "Where are they going?"

"Probably to hang off the back of the train and smoke. That's what we did, anyway."

"On the--the school train?" He supposed he shouldn't name it, in case any muggles nearby were as bored as he was, and eavesdropping.

"Yes."

"We don't do that anymore."

"Smoking is very bad for you," Snape said absently.

"We can't even hang out the back and not smoke," Draco said mournfully.

"They closed off the viewing platform after--" he stopped abruptly.

"After what?"

"After Potter shoved me off of it."

"He shoved you off the train?" Draco squawked indignantly. "Was it moving?"

"He claimed it was an accident."

"Jesus," Malfoy swore.

"Yes, well. I think he got detention."

"Next time I see Potter--Potter Junior--do you want me to shove him off something?" Draco offered.

"No, thank you."

"Why didn't somebody stop him?" Draco wondered.

"From shoving me off the train, or in general?"

Draco wasn't sure.

"As for the train, the Prefects were all in the front compartment having their little meeting, which is why we Slytherins were in the back to begin with. My housemates--" he shrugged. "Didn't like me much either."

"Were you injured?"

"Two broken arms and a concussion."

"And all he got was detention? They should have horsewhipped him."

"Yes, well. He died, and I lived."

"That's one way of looking at it, I guess," Draco said. "How about in general? He seems to have gotten away with a hell of a lot." He was a lot like his son, that way.

"He was Potter." Snape shrugged. "And Slytherin was the house that produced Voldemort and all his Death Eaters. I was the easiest one to catch." He shrugged again. "The sham Moody turned you into a ferret and bounced you around the dungeon, and no one said a word. Are you surprised?"

"Not surprised, just..." He shrugged. "It's not right."

"I still haven't been able to figure out what they were thinking," Snape agreed. "The way it usually went, I'd say something to one of them, and then Potter and Black would try to kill me, and then we'd all get detention for fighting. It's a wonder it didn't turn me nasty, really."

"I quite agree," Draco said seriously. "What does Dumbledore say about it?"

"He says...a lot of things. He says they didn't realize how dangerous the things they did were, and that a lot weren't as dangerous as I thought they were. Which..." He shrugged. "I really did come to school knowing more curses than most seventh-years. But I also knew exactly how dangerous they were. My father, for all his flaws, did bother to teach me that the Dark Arts weren't a toy for my amusement. But somehow, it never helped to point out that I could have killed them, and hadn't."

Draco wasn't surprised, somehow, and motioned for the Professor to go on.

He shook his head. "If that was really the problem, someone should have sat them down and told them that throwing people off trains, and feeding them to werewolves, and all the rest of it, actually is dangerous, thank you very much. But I still think they did know, and just didn't care. They knew perfectly well they wouldn't be punished, and they hadn't reached the point they could see any reason not to do something if an adult was going to come along and punish them for it. And I never thought it mattered much whether I was caught or not. So they'd see McGonagall coming and put me down and give me back my spell book or something, and then by the time she got close enough to see what was happening, they'd all be standing there covered in boils and looking like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. It makes me sick just thinking about it."

"That was kind of stupid of you," Draco pointed out.

"Well, they'd only stand still long enough for me to get them if a teacher was coming. And I learned discretion later."

"Yeah, I guess you did."

"Dumbledore also says," Snape continued, "That he didn't know how bad it was, and he's sorry."

"Huh."

"Yes. I haven't decided how I feel about that yet."

Draco wasn't sure, either. "Why do you trust him? After all that?" He sometimes wondered if he could forgive Dumbledore for what he had done to Snape.

Snape traced his mouth with his thumb. "I don't know if I can answer that. Most people, you realize, wonder why he trusts me."

"Yes." He didn't.

"The general opinion is that it has something to do with Leglimency. That he looked in my mind and saw--something, or didn't see--something else. But that's not it. He could have hidden something from me, and he supposes I could have hidden something from him. I couldn't have," he added parenthetically, "but there's no way to prove that. The short answer is that I trust him because he trusts me. The long answer is--" He fell silent. "Have you ever heard the saying, 'Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in'?"

"Yes." Was Snape saying he trusted Dumbledore because he had nowhere else to go? That was...disheartening, somehow.

But Snape continued, "It's from a poem, about a hired man--a man who does work for a farmer--"

Draco thought he could probably have guessed that, but chose not to interrupt.

"He's dying, and he goes back to a place where he used to work. He's laying there in the kitchen, dying, and telling them he's going to get up and dig a ditch, or something, I was never clear on the agricultural details, as soon as he's had a bit of a rest. The farmer wants to throw him out, but his wife starts talking about how sad it is that he doesn't have a home to die in. Then the farmer says that line about how home is where they have to take you in. And the wife answers, 'I should have called it something you, somehow haven't to deserve.'"

Draco was still confused. Who, exactly, was Snape supposed to be in this parable? The hired man? "But he didn't know," he pointed out. "If he was still talking about getting up and doing work for them, he didn't know."

Snape looked irritated. "That's not the point. The point is, trust is like that. It's a thing you somehow haven't to deserve. It's always a matter of blind faith. You can say there's a reason, but.... That's what I think, anyhow." He looked down at his magazine again, embarrassed, Draco thought.

"So you don't really know why," Draco said, checking to see if he'd got it this time.

"...No. I don't really know why. But I think, perhaps, you're not asking the right question. You want to know why I've forgiven him for...the whole mess...when I haven't forgiven anyone else for it."

"Maybe," Draco said. He wasn't entirely sure that was what he had been wondering at all, but it seemed a good thing to find out about.

"I'd just been a Death Eater for a year. I wasn't exactly in a position to be self-righteous about his mistakes. And he did admit it was a mistake."

That didn't seem enough, somehow.

But Snape wasn't finished. "And things changed after that. At Hogwarts, I mean. He wouldn't tolerate bullying of students from Death Eater families. Anymore."

"But--" Draco thought of his own years at school.

"Of course not all...ill feeling...was completely eliminated, but things never got so out of hand as they'd been when I was in school. And that includes the year or two after Voldemort's....disappearance...when it seemed like every day bought news of a Slytherin parent's arrest, trial, or sentencing. There were students who tormented them. But Dumbledore turned them over to--to me. They rarely did it more than once. They rarely did it more than once. So there was teasing, and whisper campaigns, and the occasional hexing in the corridors, but nobody was beaten bloody, or fed to a werewolf, or..."

"Shoved off the back of a train," Draco suggested.

"Precisely. Until this year, of course, and that was a different sort of matter entirely."

Yes, Draco had been beaten by Death Eaters for not being one. That was a difference.

Snape sat back in his seat. "So the moral of the story is, it isn't enough simply to apologize for a calamitous mistake. You also have to--not make it again."

Draco thought about whether he had done that. Not that any of his mistakes were as calamitous as becoming a Death Eater. Or allowing Snape to be tormented for seven years of school. Calling Granger a mud blood--repeatedly. "Weasley is Our King." Telling Longbottom he had no brains. None of those, at least, had had much effect, that he had seen. Granger and Longbottom had forgiven him, at least. Did that make a difference? And Millicent. For five years the rest of the House had followed his example. If he had set one worth following.... That detestable dumb show in the Astronomy Tower would still have gone off, but Millicent wouldn't have been involved, and she'd still be alive.

"Turning people into symbols," the Professor said quietly.

"What?"

"That's the mistake."

"Whose?"

"Everybody's." Snape rummaged in his pockets and took out the packet of biscuits. "I'm not very good at not making it. But I'm better than I was." Unwrapping the biscuits, he gave one to Draco.

"You aren't not-- I mean, you do okay."

"Really?" He drawled, " 'Potter. Our. New. Celebrity."

Draco laughed at his Professor's imitation of himself. "Why'd you do it, then?"

"I just can't stand the sight of him," Snape admitted.

"Because he looks like his father?"

The Professor nodded.

"I look a lot like my father, too," he observed.

"I never hated your father the way I did Potter. Lucius was...he just got broken. Potter never-- Potter would do anything to help somebody he liked, and that was the side of him most people saw. The side of him people talk about when they tell Potter stories about what a wonderful person his father was. But those he didn't like--" Snape shrugged. "He used to say that the only good Slytherin was a dead one. People thought he was joking. He said it in Defense once. The class was about emergency procedures. If the castle was attacked. Potter asked why the school didn't shut down Slytherin House and expel the lot of us, because everyone else would be safer that way. The teacher said, for one thing, a lot of us would likely be killed. That's when he said it. His little friends all laughed, and he sat there grinning like a fool. I sat there--all of us Slytherins sat there--and waited to see what the Professor would do. She said--and I'll never forget this-- 'That's as may be, Potter, but for now we have to live with them.'"

Draco waited breathlessly. "Well?" he finally demanded. "What did you do?"

Snape shook his head. "Nothing. I didn't trust myself to do anything and not kill him, I think. I couldn't think of anything to do that wouldn't either land me in Azkaban or trivialize what he'd just done."

"I'd've....I don't know what I would have done," Draco admitted. "Did you ever ask that teacher why she said that?"

"I never got the chance. She was killed before I started teaching. In a firefight with some Death Eaters. I used to hope it was a Slytherin who killed her, but now....I rather hope it wasn't." He munched another biscuit. "All right, your turn. Do you understand now why I took you out behind the woodshed for 'you'll be next, mud bloods'?"

He had forgotten that one. At the time, Snape had called it 'impolitic' and 'thuggish.' It might have done more good at the time if he'd talked about the real reason. "Yes. It wasn't exactly the same thing, but..."

"How is it different?" Snape challenged him.

"Because..." He thought hard. "Because I was saying what I thought was going to happen. I wasn't..." he searched for a word. "Proposing it."

"I suppose that's a legitimate distinction. But you did think it would be a good thing, if it happened."

"Yes," Draco admitted, pretty thoroughly ashamed of himself for ever having done anything that reminded his Professor of James Potter. "I was wrong," he added humbly.

"Damn straight you were." He let Draco think about that for a long time before saying, "New question. If all Slytherins harbor prejudice against muggle borns--assume for a moment that they are--why isn't it all right for the rest of the school to hate Slytherins?"

"Is our summer going to be all about ethics?" Draco asked, whining a little.

"Life is all about ethics, Draco," the Professor intoned, with only the barest suggestion of irony. "Well?"

Draco thought. "Well," he said slowly. "Because...they're supposed to be the good guys?" It had worked once...

"No. And not funny. Think."

"I am. I don't know."

"Let's try an easier question. Suppose Potter knocks you down and steals all your money."

"Okay," Draco said, not entirely sure he liked this new line of thinking.

"Why isn't it all right for you to then knock, say, Weasley, down and steal all his money? And it's not," he added quickly, "Because he doesn't have any."

"Okay. That's easy. A, the two things are not related. And B, because if Weasley follows my splendid example, he'll find somebody to knock down and steal from, and then it won't stop until everybody in the school has been knocked down and robbed at least once. Twice for the Hufflepuffs."

"Precisely. Except for that last bit."

"Well, they would be," Draco defended himself.

"Fine, but it's not important."

Draco got back to the point. "You're saying being prejudiced against muggle borns and the rest of the school hating us aren't related? But--"

"Of course they're related. But in our recent example, Potter robbing you and you robbing Weasley were related. But the one doesn't excuse the other. It took me quite a long time to figure out that if someone wrongs you, that doesn't mean you get to wrong someone else in exchange. You don't even get to wrong the same person back."

"What am I supposed to do, then, just let Potter get away with stealing all my money?"

"No, you can knock him down and take it back. Just not...with interest. And not, as you say, in a way that ensures the problem will continue until the entire school has been...knocked down."

Draco thought he did see, now. "My turn, then. What would you have done, in that teacher's place?"

"That's a good question," the Professor said. "I never thought about it that way before."

"Uh-huh." Draco waited.

"A hundred points from Gryffindor, and detention. Lines. 'I will not wish my classmates dead,' one thousand times."

"And?"

Snape looked blank.

"That takes care of Potter. What about the other 19 people in the class?"

"Thirty-odd, actually. The school used to be bigger, before.... But if I was teaching Defense, we'd already have talked about ethics. Extensively."

"Clearly, it didn't take," Draco said. "If Potter is still shooting his mouth off."

"Fine. We'll talk about it some more."

"And say what?" Draco prodded him. He thought he liked this game, after all. When he got to ask the questions, anyway.

Snape steepled his fingers. "I'd ask them, what are the two elements of the Killing Curse." He waited for the answer. Draco was apparently playing the role of the class in this exercise, as well as the Socratic inquirer.

"The incantation, of course, and....oh." Realization dawned. "You have to want it."

"Precisely. Incantation and intention. Five points to Slytherin. Which would you say is more important, Mr. Potter?" Draco wondered for a second if he was supposed to play Potter, too, and considered what accent and expression of cruel idiocy to assume for the part. But Snape continued, "What's that, Mr. Potter? I don't think that's an answer to my question. Nor is it physically possible. Five points from Gryffindor for your language. Lupin, can you help your...colleague?"

He was enjoying this way too much, Draco thought. "You don't have to act out the whole thing, Professor. Get to the point."

"All right. I make the point that the intention to kill is of the Dark, and ask Potter why he thinks the only good Slytherin is a dead one. He says something stupid and offensive and I take more points, and eventually he says something about how most of You-know-who's supporters came from Slytherin. I say, most, but not all, and there are some Slytherins who don't support him, and, most importantly, none of the students in this school have chosen their sides yet. Then I say something stirring about turning people into symbols, quote Dumbledore on choices making us who we are, and ask Potter what he thinks his choices about Slytherins have made him. That's the bell, so I assign a two-foot essay on contributions to the field of Defense Against the Dark Arts made by former Slytherins, and go off to make sure none of my students do anything stupid in the break."

"Sounds good to me," Draco said, impressed. "Okay, I have a follow-up question."

"I think your turn is over."

"It's a really good one," he warned.

"Fine. What?"

"Why didn't your Defense teacher do that?"

"Because she was an idiot," Snape said petulantly.

Draco considered saying, "No, and not funny," but decided discretion would be the better part of valor, and just looked at him intently instead.

"Fine." He sighed. "Most people don't bother teaching ethics in Defense. Which is a tremendous mistake, but that's neither here nor there. She was probably too stupid to see why it was relevant."

"Was Defense a traveling circus in your day like it is for us?" Draco wondered.

"Yes. That teacher was the one we had the longest--I think she was there three years. Why?"

Draco wasn't sure why he had asked. "Just wondered."

They sat quietly for a few minutes. "I'm going to see if there's a place to get a cup of tea," Snape decided. "Come on."

They walked through three passenger cars. Draco was glad he'd insisted on leaving his wheelchair with the baggage--he'd have been trapped in his seat if he still had to use it. On the other hand, his balance was still very poor, and the side-to-side rocking of the train didn't help a bit. He blundered into Snape's back twice, and nearly fell into other passengers' laps twice. He brandished his cane to illustrate that he was actually crippled and not just careless, and watched their irritation turn into pity.

Not a moment too soon, they reached a car with a counter selling drinks, snacks, and wrapped sandwiches. There were four or five booths with plastic tables and benches. One of these was occupied by the teenagers, who were drinking cokes and laughing. Draco and Snape sat at an empty table, Draco taking--more like collapsing into--the seat that had the best view of the other kids. "How much further is it?" Draco wanted to know.

Snape looked at his watch. "Two and a half hours on this train, then we change and go for another three."

"Oh."

"It's a long trip. Next time, you'll be able to Apparate. Next summer, I mean."

"Yeah." The reminder that he was almost grown, that the next year would be his last at Hogwarts, was oddly unwelcome. "What do you figure I'll do then?"

"That depends."

"On what?" he asked, wishing the answer would be "on what you want to do," and knowing it wouldn't be.

"On who's still alive. Among other things."

"That's about what I figured."

He sat and watched the other kids for a while. Three of them wore school uniform, different ones. The other two had on jeans and sweatshirts. They were two boys and three girls. He was too far away to hear what they were saying, but they had stopped laughing and seemed to be talking about something serious. Somewhat serious. He wondered what kids talked about, if they weren't wizards or mad.

'Go on, then," Snape said.

"What?" He wondered if they were having a conversation he hadn't noticed.

"Talk to them if you like. I'll be here."

"And what? Tell them I'm foreign?"

The Professor sighed. "Tell the you go to a religious school. Jesuit, let's say. You know enough about muggles not to screw up too spectacularly."

"Really? Okay." He got up and started toward the other kids before the Professor could change his mind. About halfway there, though, he had second thoughts himself. He'd gotten the idea, somehow, that the other kids had met on the train and were talking with each other to pass the time, but maybe they all knew each other before. And even if not, hw did you go up to a group of strangers and start talking to the, if you didn't have a school or a madhouse in common?

But he couldn't turn back now--Snape would tease him, and anyway, he wanted to see what it was like talking to people who didn't have death hanging over their heads.

The other kids looked up at his approach. "Um. Hi."

"Hi," one of the girls echoed. He wasn't sure if she was making fun of him or not.

"Er...can I sit with you?"

The looked around for a moment, and the girl said, "Yeah, I guess. Budge up, Brian." She prodded the boy next to her.

The moved over to make room for him on the bench, and he sat down.

"I'm Georgiana," the first girl said, "And this is Brian, and Tim--" she indicated the boy on the other side of the table. "And that's Angel, and--I forget her name."

"Chandra," the other girl said.

"I'm Draco," he said, wondering if he should have asked Snape for a muggle name.

"Is that your real name?" Georgiana asked. "Because I don't think 'Angel' is really hers."

"It is so! I told you, I was born on Christmas," Angel, or whoever she was, protested.

Draco thought she was lying, too. "Yes," he said unconvincingly. "My parents were into, er, Astrology."

"So why are you wearing that--thing?" Angel rummaged through the empty crisp bags on the table, found one with a few crumbs in it, and poured them into her hand.

"School uniform," Draco said. "It's a Jesuit school." He shrugged, as if that explained it all.

"So are you like, going to be a priest?" Georgiana asked.

"No."

"So do you believe in God?" Angel licked crisp crumbs off of her palm.

"I'm not sure," he said truthfully.
"Is that okay at your school?" Chandra asked.

Draco shrugged and lied. "We have to go to chapel a lot, and take History of Religion--which is the most boring class ever. I swear the teacher must be four hundred years old. But they don't really ask, unless you make a big deal of it. This one girl stood up in chapel and said God was dead--" Which Lydia had claimed she'd done, at her school "--and she got caned or something, but they don't really ask."

"There are girls at your school?" Georgiana asked, sounding disappointed, for some reason.

"Oh yeah. Since it was founded."

"I don't think there's a god," Brian said. "I think there's, like, this force that's made up of all the people who ever lived, and when you die, you join it. And everybody's all mixed together. Black, white, guys, girls, everybody."

There was a moment of quiet before Georgiana said, "That's deep, man," in a spacey voice.

"Are you taking the piss?" Brian demanded.

"No. I mean, kind of."

"So," Chandra asked, "Do you think you're still you after you die? I mean, do you remember all your memories?"

"Maybe," Brian said. "But maybe you remember everyone else's, too."

They talked for a while about what happened when you died, and whether there was a God, and why adults bothered you with Geography and why-does-your-hair-look-like-that instead of talking about these important matters.

"I think when you have a kid, they must take out part of your brain while they're at it," Angel opined.

"No, it's the first time you fill in your tax form. Your brain just slops out your ear."

"The first time you figure out the petrol consumption on your car," Tim suggested. "My Dad is, like, obsessed with how many kilometers he gets to the litre. H drives to the shop, and the first thing he does when he gets home is figure out how much the petrol cost."

"Mine does that too," Georgiana said. "They must get a manual--crap things you can worry about to avoid actually thinking about anything important."

Draco was surprised, a little. Apparently even without madness or Voldemort hanging over their heads, muggle kids didn't lead lives devoted to what Snape had once called "the relentless pursuit of frivolity." He wondered if the adults really did, either. "Some adults think about important stuff," Draco ventured.

"I guess," Georgiana said. "I've got an aunt who comes over to our house at holidays and tries to talk to me about Israel or the environment or something. But it feels weird. Like she's forgotten how or something."

"Yeah," Angel said. "My English teacher at school is one of those. She's always like, 'let's talk about your deepest feelings and your real insights about the world around you.' It's so fake, nobody ever says anything."

"And if it's your parents, you know they're only asking to get the goods on you," Brian said. "My mum will read an article in the paper and say, 'What do you think about the marijuana culture, Brian?' Like I'm going to say, 'Well, whenever me mates and I are smoking a joint--oops!'" He clapped a hand over his mouth, miming shock.

"I don't know," Chandra said. "My mum and I have some good talks. Sometimes. Like if we're in the car going somewhere far away."

Georgiana nodded. "Yeah. But it has to just sort of happen. They have to forget they're a grown person and you're a kid, before they can really talk."

They kept talking about parents, moving on to how the adults had messed up the world, leaving it for the kids to fix, and then had the nerve to say that kids were shallow and apathetic. Draco hadn't often heard kids called shallow and apathetic, but he couldn't disagree that the previous generation had handed on some spectacular cock-ups. It was something, he had to admit, that Potter probably knew even more about than he did.

Draco kept an eye on Snape during this. The Professor drank three or four cups of tea, drummed his fingers on the table, and scowled a lot. "I might have to go soon," he said, during a lull in the conversation. "My Professor's getting restless."

The kids all turned to look at the far table.

"Why's he with you, anyway? I mean, we're all heading home for the summer hols...." Angel looked embarrassed to be asking.

"Um, yeah." Draco thought quickly, and wove together a patchwork of lies and truth. "I ran away from school this one time last tem. He's supposed to keep an eye on me, make sure nothing goes wrong. I'm kind of surprised he let me talk to you, actually."

"Wow. Did your parents do spare? What did they do?" Georgiana wanted to know.

Draco had to decide which to tell, lie or truth. Lying, he decided, would hurt too much. "My father's dead, and my mother's in prison. So...they didn't much notice. My Professor was pretty worried, though."

"That's too bad," Chandra said, and the rest echoed her.

"Ho much trouble did you get in?" Georgiana continued. "Or were they so worried they didn't much care?"

"Well...I didn't get to go to the village for the rest of the year."

"And he has to go around handcuffed to Professor Death," Chandra said, looking over her shoulder at Snape. "He doesn't look much like a priest."

Draco shrugged. "Anyhow, I'd better go. Nice meeting you."

"You too."

"See you."

"Bye."

He managed to get up without any help, by clutching the table with one hand and pulling, and bracing his cane against his foot and pushing with the other. The Professor joined him in walking back to their seats. "Thought you were going to talk to them all day," Snape said peevishly.

"Sorry."

"Ought to check on Snuffles, anyway," he pointed out.

"Oh." Draco had, temporarily, forgotten about his pet. "I hope nobody found him."

"I expect we'd have heard the screaming from here if they did," Snape said dryly.

When they found their places and sat down, Draco pulled Snuffy's crate from under his seat and opened the lid a crack. Snuffy snuffled eagerly at his fingers. Draco patted him quickly and stowed him under the seat again. "He's fine."

"Good." Snape hesitated. "You found things to talk about with the other young people?"

"Yes. It was very interesting."

"What did you talk about, then?"

"This and that." He thought the Professor would probably find his new friends a bit silly. "One of them said you didn't look much like a priest, but they seemed to buy it."

"Good. I was worried, after I sent you over there, that one of them might be Catholic and actually know what a Jesuit was."

"Apparently not," said Draco, who wasn't very sure what one was, either.

The only noteworthy event of the rest of the journey was that Georgiana stopped by their seats about an hour later.

"Hey, priest-boy," she said, beckoning him.

"I'm not a priest," Draco answered. What did she want?

"I'm getting off the train next stop, so I have to go back and collect my bag. Do you want to exchange telephone numbers? I mean, in case you get bored over the summer or something." Georgiana laughed a little, for some reason.

"Um...I don't know the number of where I'll be staying," Draco said, trying not to look at the Professor. "But I'll take yours, and ring you if I can." He was having electricity put in at the Manor, but hadn't even thought about a telephone. But there was a telephone box in the village, wasn't there? He thought he had seen one.

"Okay." She rummaged in the pockets of her school blazer and found a biro with a chewed-up cap. "I don't have any paper, d'you?"

"No." Parchment, yes, in his bag, but paper, no.

She grabbed his hand, leaning over Professor Snape -- "Sorry, Father"-- and wrote the digits on his hand. "There. Just remember to copy it down before you wash your hands. I lost one that way once."

"I will. See you."

"Ta-ta."

Draco waited until she had gone to look at Snape. "Tut-tut," he said. "First that unfortunate young woman in the asylum, then Miss Huffnargle, now a complete stranger you met on a train. You do seem determined to leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake."

"Oh, shut up."

"And that girl. Carrying out her seduction in front of a man of the cloth. In my day, we had a name for women like that."

Dracu murmured something that just might have been, "Yeah--Aunt Bellatrix."

#