The If Sieve

If you ask him to, he'll protect you. He's been protecting me since I was a year old.

Draco made a face at his mirror. He didn't know why he was still thinking about that.

Dumbledore's ... not like anyone else.

He put his toothbrush down and turned away.

Potter had sounded so sincere. How could he believe in Dumbledore like that? The Headmaster had been ... with his favouritism and his idiotic speeches and the way he'd dumped the infant saviour of the world onto Muggles who made him miserable. It didn't make sense.

Except ... He's the only one Voldemort's ever been afraid of, everybody knows that. Except Potter had believed in him.

He wiped his mouth on a towel and wandered back out into the seventh year dorm. Goyle was buried in another comic book on his bed and Crabbe was frowning at his Charms textbook. Nott and Zabini were playing a rather loud game of cards; Draco wasn't sure what the rules were but Zabini was apparently losing quite badly and had already pledged to be Nott's slave for a week, plus whatever he got for his birthday.

Draco closed himself inside his bed curtains and drew the covers up over his chin.

Given how things had turned out, he rather wished that he'd chosen to throw himself on Dumbledore's mercy or something at the beginning of last year, rather than living through that hellish year and the nightmare at the top of the Astronomy Tower. But he hadn't felt even a shadow of guilt when he was planning last year. He'd never liked Dumbledore and when the choice, as the Dark Lord presented it, had been the Headmaster's life or that of Draco and his mother -- honestly, he hadn't even had to think about it.

When he was presented with a man whom he'd never actually hated, defenceless and reasoning with him for his life, then yes, okay, he'd discovered that maybe he didn't quite have the will to murder somebody, no matter how strong the incentive. But he'd been relieved to see Snape do it instead; relief so strong he nearly passed out. He'd never been guilty about letting in the Death Eaters -- as soon as he'd been sure Greyback hadn't killed or turned anyone -- and setting in motion the events that led to Dumbledore's death.

Narcissa or Dumbledore. It wasn't a choice.

Except. Except for some reason Potter had ... loved Dumbledore. Draco was almost sure that was what his tone had meant.

He rolled over, pounding irritably at his pillow.

Somehow it had never occurred to him that Dumbledore had had people who loved him.

It was stupid and it didn't make any difference now; but it hadn't.

*

Weasley must have spent at least part of the day in the hospital wing, after what happened at the Whomping Willow, since there was no sign of him in Potions the next morning.

Potter worked with Granger; her bushy hair almost obscured his face as she explained something. Their cauldren bubbled in a well-behaved fashion at her elbow.

"Malfoy, did you do something with the Skrewt teeth?"

Draco thought for a second and located the teeth under the green and pink coils of chain-of-hearts on their desk top. He pushed them across to Nott, who tipped them into the mortar and began grinding them into powder. Draco, stirring the cauldren in the careful, even circles Nott was incapable of, looked back at Potter and Granger.

Granger was adding the sheared-off leaves of their chain-of-hearts, one precise heart at a time, while Potter separated sticky strands of mermaid hair and laid them across their countertop. His fingers were deft and careful and he worked with unusual concentration. Maybe he was trying to make up some lost ground on his plummeting Potions reputation.

He frowned, absently brushing his hair back from his face, and left a smear of clear wetness on his cheekbone.

Draco wondered whether Granger would point it out, or if he'd walk around with it on his cheek all day, oblivious.

Granger said something to him. He laid down the last of the mermaid hair and took up a quill, scratching notes onto the parchment at his elbow. He chewed on the little finger of his left hand as he wrote. Then he absently sucked on the tip, pressing his knuckles against his mouth.

Maybe he felt Draco's stare intensify. He looked up, scrubbing self-consciously at his cheek, and flushed a little. Then he scowled, his eyes narrowing in easy suspicion.

Draco looked away. He concentrated on the embarrassment of being caught staring. It was easier to think about than the prickly, sick disappointment in his stomach.

"Is that fine enough?"

He glanced at Nott's Skrewt teeth-powder and made a face.

"Too fine. We're going to have to add extra sea salt."

Nott poked at the contents of the stone bowl. "Are you sure? We could just add more teeth."

Draco rolled his eyes. "If we want to spend the whole night having nightmares rather than lucid dreams when Slughorn makes us test it." He glanced up the top of the room where the professor was leaning back at his desk reading a letter, a satisfied-cat expression on his lips. Then he looked at Nott again, smirking a bit.

"Although if that's the only way you can get your thrills ..."

Nott shook his head at him, not looking up from the bowl where he was blending salt with the Skrewt teeth. "Wanker."

Draco didn't look at Potter again for the remainder of the lesson.

*

He spent his free time between Transfigurations and dinner the next day back in the library, scribbling down ideas for a new If. It took him a while to realise that his corner of the library wasn't actually deserted: there were people on the other side of the tall shelf by his shoulder. Every now and then somebody would sigh loudly and turn a page and somebody else would shush them. At one point someone apparently stood up and paced. There was a bitten off protest and a scramble and Draco speculated that they'd just tripped over the other person's (unless there were more than two people) legs.

He was considering moving to another desk, where he could have peace and quiet while he pretended to study, when Potter broke the silence.

"I just want to know what he meant by it."

There was a muffled thump as somebody closed a book, then a sigh.

"Maybe he didn't mean anything by it, Harry." That was Granger.

"He meant something by it. Why would he help us like that? Do you think it was a trap? Did he set up the willow to catch us in the first place?"

A louder sigh now. "The willow caught us because we took too long getting to the tunnel. If Ron hadn't dropped his broom we would have been in time."

"It snagged on the ground!" Weasley this time; the full complement then.

Draco wondered where this tunnel they seemed to think was under the Whomping Willow led to. Out of school grounds, he supposed.

"Sorry, Ron. I just meant there wasn't any conspiracy, honestly. Although I think when we try again tomorrow night we should probably go via the Hump-Backed Witch statue. The willow's too erratic."

"I don't believe he just meant to help us." That was Potter again, a stubborn note in his voice. "He had some other motive, you know he did."

There was a thump, like somebody dropping a book, or maybe thumping their head back against a bookshelf.

"Here's an idea," Weasley said. "We could stop talking about Malfoy. He helped us, he didn't help us, whatever. I thought you were angry at Snape rather than him, anyway."

"That was before he waltzed back into the school as though he'd bought it! You can't kill the Headmaster and then just walk right back in! I want to know what McGonagall was thinking."

"He didn't kill Professor Dumbledore," Granger said, a cautious note in her voice. "You were watching and you told us he couldn't. You said he lowered his wand."

There was a pause. Draco's eyebrows were climbing to his hair. Potter had been watching? Did he have a wizard's spyglass as well as an invisibility cloak?

"I just want to know what he was doing," Potter said finally. Weasley groaned.

Draco listened for a little longer but they seemed to have run out of conversation. They left five minutes before dinner. Draco followed a couple of minutes later.

*

He dragged Crabbe and Goyle back to the library after dinner. This time he put in: If Harry Potter chose to like Draco Malfoy when he met him in Diagon Alley before their first year at Hogwarts. He dropped it into the sieve. There was a brief moment in which it sank and then, like the Voldemort-bunny slipper If, it came out again in three tattered pieces, accompanied by a crackle of sparks.

*

"So Blaise said you were in a foul mood last night." Pansy dropped into the space next to him at breakfast. "Does that mean you did another scene in your sieve where it turned out Potter hated you like Brussels sprouts on toast?"

Draco swished the pumpkin juice in his glass, frowning in concentration.

"No," he said. "It didn't work at all. I think I worded it wrong. You don't choose to like someone, do you? You only really choose about things you're going to do."

"I guess? You do know I don't know what you're talking about here."

He smiled at her, swift and flashing. "I don't think I played that first meeting with Potter very well, actually. Sometimes I tend to brag; I don't know if you've noticed that."

"... no?" she said faintly.

He waved a hand. "Well, whatever. But the point is, I met Potter and I wanted to impress him, right? Because I was eleven and a bit pathetic. But I had to have made a choice about how I was going to do it. It just happens that I chose to brag. I didn't always do that. I'll bet I could have done it another way."

She looked doubtful. "I guess, Draco."

He turned to grab another sausage from the piled platter and became aware that Goyle had gone stiff and tense beside him. He was reading a letter -- the post had come about ten minutes ago but Draco hadn't received anything so he'd hardly noticed it. Goyle's shoulders hunched a little further as Draco watched.

Crabbe met Draco's eyes. "It's from Phoebe," he said quietly.

Draco hesitated a moment. Then he tapped Goyle on the shoulder. The other boy jumped. He looked hunted.

"Let me read," Draco ordered. Goyle passed it over without a word.

It was fairly short.

Dear Gregory,

The Dark Lord grows in strength and potency. His path is the path of glory. I know that you agree with me, if you could break free of the influence of the Malfoy outcast.

It is for us to act in our father's stead now that his fidelity to our Lord has led to his persecution. I will not betray him -- I could not. I need your promise that you could not either.

Mother continues to pretend the war does not exist. I despise her for it. I do not want to despise you too, my little brother.

I will talk to you more at Christmas.

My love,

Phoebe Goyle

Draco's lip curled. Goyle's sister hadn't even joined the Death Eaters before her father's arrest and now 'his path is the path of glory'? Her letters to Goyle had been increasingly fanatical this year. She seemed to believe that she could make up for her father rotting in prison if she believed in Voldemort enough. Draco sincerely doubted that Goyle Senior cared much about the war at this stage, or about anything other than dreams of hot baths and soft beds.

"Ignore her," he said, passing it back.

Goyle put it in his pocket.

"Are you sure about fighting against the Dark Lord?" he asked in a low voice.

Draco gave him a level look.

"He let all of our fathers rot in prison. He preaches about purity and tradition and then recruits the deranged and sadistic and gives them free rein. He sent a paedophile werewolf into our school to help kill the Headmaster. He threatened my mother." Draco went back to his breakfast. "I'm sure."

*

Draco wrote carefully, taking pain with his penmanship: If Draco Malfoy chose to impress Harry Potter by making him laugh rather than by bragging to him, when they met in Diagon Alley before their first year at Hogwarts. He pulled back and looked at it. It read kind of awkwardly but he thought it might work.

Goyle had put his letter away. He seemed to be trying to forget it. He had his small hoard of Honeydukes chocolates spread out on the desk in front of them -- his cloak nearby to throw over them if Madam Pince came by -- and he was ordering them by size and colour.

Crabbe settled by a bookshelf to keep watch, solid and reliable.

Draco dropped the parchment into the sieve and watched it turn blue with satisfaction. He reached his wand through the intersecting rings.

If

Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions formed around him. It looked as it always did, the lighting subdued and tasteful. Sieve Draco stood on a stool at the back of the shop, looking absurdly small again. He was half swamped in swathes of black material; far more than could be needed to make his school robes. His pointed little face looked a bit anxious and his hair was mussed; probably by the robe going over his head. He and the witch pinning his robes both turned their heads as the shop bell chimed.

Harry Potter slipped through the door as soon as it was open far enough. He stopped on the threshold, letting the door close behind him. Madam Malkin had been totting something up at the counter but she bustled forwards now with a smile.

"Er," Potter said.

"Hogwarts, dear? Got the lot here," -- she smiled as though that was a ministry secret she was telling him in confidence -- "another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

Potter's eyes slid to Draco in the back and he bit his lip. Madam Malkin steered him over and found another stool for him to stand on. He looked a bit overwhelmed as an identically enormous black robe was placed over his head.

Sieve Draco was still watching him unabashedly. He looked curious and a bit excited -- Watcher Draco could remember how excited he'd been all the time during the lead-up to his first year at Hogwarts. He'd barely slept at any point between receiving his letter and boarding the Express.

"Hullo," he said as soon as Potter's head was clear of the robe. "Hogwarts too?"

"Yes."

"Don't you feel like a Dementor or something in these robes?" Sieve Draco asked. He waved his arms, wriggling his fingers inside the acres of black sleeve, and made a Whooo sound. ("Keep still, love," the witch pinning his hem told him.)

Potter obviously didn't understand what he was talking about but he laughed anyway.

Draco looked encouraged. He moved his arms again, spookily, ignoring the tsk from the witch pinning his hem. "Come closer, your soul will be tasty," he said in a rasping voice. "Come closer and let me kiss you."

Potter let out a startled giggle. "Did you say kiss?"

"Didn't you know that Dementors kiss you?" Sieve Draco asked, dropping into his normal voice. "It's how they suck out your so-o-oul." He drew out the last word, obviously deriving a lot of enjoyment from of the idea.

Potter looked unnerved but he was also leaning forward a bit. "They do?"

Draco nodded. "They lay a shrivelled grey hand on your shoulder and then they suck your soul out of you and crunch on it. Then they sit around picking bits of soul out of their teeth."

Potter had leaned a little too far forward. Madam Malkin had to put out a hand to steady him as he wobbled on the stool.

"Do they do -- that -- a lot?" he asked. He sounded wary.

Draco paused. "Only to convicted criminals," he admitted. "And my father says that only fools and villains get convicted by the Wizengamot."

Potter frowned. "What do you need to do to have one of those -- to have that done to you?"

Draco shrugged. "Kill someone, I suppose. I say, look at that man!"

Watcher Draco and Potter both turned to see Hagrid blocking out all the sun at the window, holding up two enormous icecream cones and grinning at Potter.

"That's Hagrid," Potter said, a happy, proud note entering his voice. "He works at Hogwarts. He gave my cousin Dudley a tail."

Draco blinked. "I've heard of him," he said. "I thought he couldn't really do magic. Do you think ... will he give the students tails, would you think?"

"Only the nasty ones," Potter said, with the supreme unconcern of somebody who has absolutely no doubt that the nasty ones mean definitely not him.

Draco looked a bit relieved. "Oh, well, then," he said. "I suppose your cousin deserved it."

Potter bounced a bit on his stool, apparently needing more emphasis than his voice could give alone. "He did," he said fiercely. "He's horrible. The only person in the world who's more horrible is my uncle Vernon."

Draco blinked a little.

"... I have an aunt who's mad," he said eventually. Watcher Draco couldn't tell if he was offering sympathy or trying to compete.

Madam Malkin began rose to her feet with a general bustling sound. "That's you done, my dear," she said cheerily. She was apparently unfazed by horrible uncles and mad aunts. Watcher Draco wondered idly what the second witch was doing with his robes, when he'd been there longer than Potter and she still hadn't finished. Sieve Draco was too distracted to notice, though.

"What's your name?" he asked as Potter hopped down from the footstool.

"Er, Harry," Potter said. "Harry Potter."

Draco stared at him for a moment, his mouth falling open and his eyes dragging up and down the other boy as though he must look different now. Then he smiled, brilliant and blinding.

"I'm Draco Malfoy," he said. "I'll see you at Hogwarts, I expect."

Potter was blinking away the effects of the smile. He smiled back, uncertainly. "I expect so."

Madam Malkin let out her breath in a whoosh once he was out the door. "Fancy that. I measured Harry Potter for his first school robes! Who would have thought?"

Watcher Draco took his eyes away from the door that had closed behind Potter and then the room lurched in darkness. There was a short slide.

*

This was a smallish stone chamber in ... probably Hogwarts, judging by the small horde of anxious first years milling about it. Draco had to move quickly aside to prevent three of them walking through him. He knew from Pensieve experiences that that was unnerving.

He spotted his own fair head amongst the others. Harry Potter stood near him and Crabbe and Goyle hulked comfortingly behind. Potter was trying to straighten his hair.

"Do you know how they sort us into houses?" he asked, glancing between Draco, Crabbe and Goyle. This was just before the Sorting, then; Draco remembered McGonagall giving them a brief speech about the four houses before disappearing through a door and leaving them to stew.

"It's a ... test of some kind, I think," Draco said. "To see what kind of person you are. I'll be in Slytherin, of course, all of my family have been." He said this confidently but there were lines of strain around his mouth. Watcher Draco could remember the terrible fear of disappointing Lucius over this -- this test that he couldn't control.

Potter fiddled with the hem of his black sleeve -- no longer trailing over his fingers in folds. "What if ... er, there's no house for you? If you don't belong anywhere?"

Draco scoffed. "Everybody gets Sorted. If they don't know what to do with you they just throw you in Hufflepuff, everybody knows that."

Potter frowned and Watcher Draco wondered if he was worrying that he'd be a Hufflepuff or, in contrary Potter-fashion, determining to like Hufflepuffs.

A couple of people screamed and all four boys spun around. Potter remained tense but the other three relaxed as they saw the company of ghosts who had just sailed through one of the walls. They were arguing: the Fat Friar and Nearly Headless Nick seemed to be discussing the Bloody Baron again. As though what they think of him would make any difference to him, Draco thought. Slytherin definitely has the best house ghost.

"I say, what are you all doing here?" Nearly Headless Nick interrupted himself to ask, noticing the first years.

"New students!" the Friar cried. He was as delighted as though he'd had them ordered specially. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"

Sieve Draco rolled his eyes.

"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" He flashed a cheery grin. "My old house, you know."

"Obviously," Sieve Draco murmured and Watcher Draco could almost see him redoubling his determination to be Sorted into Slytherin.

Potter blinked, turning to look at him. "Those were ghosts," he whispered.

Draco grinned and would have replied but McGonagall was back and ordering them into a line. The four boys shuffled into a roughly line-shaped formation and joined the rest.

Watcher Draco followed them out into the Great Hall.

He walked down to the Slytherin table where he could see everything and found a piece of wall to stand against. He was a bit bored through the rendition of the Sorting Hat's song -- you would think that with an entire year to come up with it, the hat might have worked out a better line than 'For I'm a Thinking Cap.'

The Sorting started and he watched it progress. It was odd seeing people he knew so nervous about their Sorting. He wanted to pat Crabbe on the back when he came up and promise that there'd never been any doubt about his going to Slytherin.

There was Sieve Draco on the stool, now. The hat completely covered his eyes. He looked tense and ridiculous, but it was over in barely a second with a shouted SLYTHERIN! He saw himself get up, cocky with relief, and saunter off to his new table to sit by Crabbe and Goyle.

When Potter stepped up, the entire hall broke out in whispers. Draco could remember how deeply irritated he had been by that. This time, though, the eleven-year-old Draco leaned forward eagerly.

It seemed to take forever; Draco wondered whether Potter was communing with the hat or something. They said it could be talkative sometimes, although it hadn't seemed to need to talk to him.

"SLYTHERIN!"

Draco stepped backwards through the wall.

By the time he'd gathered himself and pushed back into the hall -- nerving himself up to walk through solid rock -- Potter was most of the way to the Slytherin table. The cheering hadn't died away yet. Draco watched in disbelief as his younger self scooted aside to make room for Potter, giving him a smug grin.

"Why did it take so long?" he demanded as soon as the other boy was seated.

"It was ... making up its mind," Potter said. "I think. It sounded as though it wanted to put me in all the houses at once. But it said I could be -- that Slytherin could be good and I knew you were here, so ... I said that would be okay." He flushed. "Um."

Sieve Draco looked as though he'd won some sort of prize. But he only said, "Slytherin's the best house. You'll see."

Crabbe and Goyle both nodded emphatically; Crabbe looked as though he was a bit dizzy with the relief of getting into the right house himself. Goyle was grinning ear to ear and looked as though he could barely breathe with the excitement of having Harry Potter in his house; or that could have been because the feast had just materialised.

Watcher Draco was still gaping when the slide took him away.

*

The floor re-formed and found him alone in a familiar room. His own dormitory, as it looked at the beginning of every year, with beds neatly made and one trunk at the foot of each bed. There was an extra bed, this time.

He turned around at a thump of feet and voices in time to see the door swung open. It was himself pushing it but all six boys seemed to enter as a mass, a kind of many-limbed eleven-year-old-boy, chattering excitedly.

"... and then he squealed and when he turned around he had a tail," Potter was saying as he came in, his face alight.

"That was really how you got your Hogwarts letter?" Zabini demanded. He threw his robes over the bed with his trunk and flopped onto it. "The groundskeeper turned up at an island in the middle of the ocean and gave your cousin a tail?"

"Wicked ..." Nott said.

Potter nodded. "My uncle didn't want me to get it. I don't know why, since he was pretty keen to get rid of me."

Sieve Draco finished examining his bed and perched on the end of it. "How could he object to you having magic?" He wrinkled his forehead. "That doesn't make any sense, Potter."

Potter shrugged. He seemed distracted; it looked as though he'd just noticed the room properly. He was staring wide-eyed at the four-poster beds and the enchanted landscape paintings. "My aunt and uncle just didn't like magic," he said. "They thought it was freakish."

"But your aunt and uncle are Muggles," Draco said, slowly.

Potter nodded. "Yeah, that was why they didn't like it, I guess."

"That's so stupid," Draco said. "Why wouldn't they want to be better than they are? I thought everybody wanted magic."

"Didn't the owls try to deliver your letter, though?" Nott asked. He was sitting on his own bed, leaning back against the bunched up curtains at the headboard.

Potter grinned. "They tried," he said. "There were about two hundred owls sitting on our house trying to get in and once this whole pile of letters came down the chimney, but my aunt and uncle always kept me from getting them. They wouldn't even let Dudley see one. He was so annoyed." He grinned again. "It was like it was raining letters, there were thousands of them."

"You got thousands of letters?" Goyle asked, wide-eyed.

Watcher Draco remembered Dobby coming into the library where he was sitting by his father, pretending to study the first year Charms textbook. The house elf had had the letter on a silver salver and Draco had stared hard at it, because he'd stared at any letter around that time in case it was the Hogwarts one. Lucius had taken it and dismissed Dobby as though it wasn't anything important and then he'd checked the envelope for hexes and Draco had nearly died of impatience before he was allowed to open it.

It didn't seem as impressive, somehow, as having thousands of letters rain down your chimney. More dignified, certainly, but less impressive.

"You don't need to envy him, Goyle," Sieve Draco said scathingly. "They all said the same thing, you know."

Potter grinned and flopped back onto his elbows. "Well, maybe they did," he said. "I don't know, do I? I didn't get to read them. Half of them could have been copied down nursery rhymes or something."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Sure." He mimed writing at a desk and pulled a dotty, benevolent face. Watcher Draco supposed it was meant to be Dumbledore. "'Dear Mr Potter,'" he said, pretending to write, "'We are pleased to inform you that Minnie Malters was a Squib, When Matthew Muggle broke her rib. Minnie's brother wasn't pleased, so Matthew left without his knees.'"

The other boys laughed, although Zabini threw a pillow at him and demanded to know whether he remembered all his nursery rhymes like a good boy. Draco hexed the pillow into a pillow with teeth (Watcher Draco suspected he'd attempted a full animal transfiguration but only managed the fangs) and threw it back. Zabini dodged, yelping.

Potter laughed harder. "Is that ... are all wizarding nursery rhymes like that?" he asked. "With people losing their knees?"

Draco shook his head, sitting down again. "Do you really not know anything about the wizarding world?" he asked. "Not anything? Not even nursery rhymes?"

Potter shook his head. He reached up in a nervous motion and tried to flatten his hair (Draco didn't think he ever even tried that any more. It was clearly a lost battle at eleven.) "I don't," he said. "Not anything. I didn't know wizards existed. I ... is everybody else going to know everything? That girl on the train, she said she was brought up as a Muggle, but she'd already read all the textbooks and she knew loads more than me. They're ..." He chewed on his lip, his expression fierce and uncertain at the same time. "They're going to boot me out after the first class, when I really won't know anything and they decide I'm an idiot."

Zabini frowned. He'd pushed the snapping pillow onto the floor, as far away from his bed as he could get it. "I think there are quite a few Muggle-born students every year," he said. "A couple of the Slytherin girls in our year are, aren't they? I think that girl Greengrass said she was."

Draco made a face. "They shouldn't let any in. That's what my father says. They're ..." he noticed Potter's face and realised he wasn't helping. "Er. I mean. There probably are quite a few. Father says it's a disgrace, so there must be a couple, at least. And anyway, we'll teach you." He grinned, triumphant. "You won't be ignorant, because we'll tell you everything you need to know. You'll know loads more than that obnoxious Muggle-born girl."

"Really?"

"What do you want to know?" Nott asked. He leaned forward, looking interested. He still had his feet on the floor; he glanced down and moved them out of the way of Zabini's pillow, which was growling a little and dragging itself along with its teeth.

Potter hesitated. He pulled himself further up against his headboard and drew his knees up. "Well, Hagrid told me a bit about ... Voldemort," he said eventually.

Zabini banged his head on his elbow sitting up so fast and Nott leaned away again. Crabbe and Goyle both looked a little scared.

"You want to know about You-Know-Who," Nott said blankly.

Potter looked from one to another of them. He finally settled on Draco, probably because he appeared the least alarmed. "Hagrid already told me a bit," he said. "But it's just ... well, on the train, everybody was asking me to show them my scar. Everybody knows about how he tried to kill me and everybody says it's some kind of miracle that he couldn't. And he killed my parents and everyone knows all about it. Except me. I just ... I want to know."

Sieve Draco chewed on the end of his finger, thinking. "Well, he disappeared when I was one," he said. "And my father says he's really gone. Sometimes the Daily Prophet says he's coming back but Father always says it's rubbish and he was too powerful a wizard to hide away, so he would only disappear if he was dead."

"Well, that's ... good, right?" Potter said. "Hagrid talked about him as though he was Darth Vader or Sauron or something." He looked at the blank faces. "Er. I mean, as if he was really evil, some kind of pure evil lord."

Sieve Draco made a face. "He wasn't evil," he said. "That's not what my father says. He says the Dark Lord had some good ideas but he just took them a bit too far, sometimes."

Potter looked at him as though he'd sprouted an extra head.

"He killed my parents," he said.

Sieve Draco hesitated. "Well, yes, but ... Father says he was working from sound principles." He sat up a bit, his voice gaining confidence -- and a noticible obnoxious streak -- as he got into his stride. "Father says that the Ministry has become dangerously liberal and that it's only a matter of time before we have a Muggle-born Minister who will rip Wizarding Britain apart because he doesn't understand it. He says that the Dark Lord said what everybody else was afraid to say: that Muggles are wizards' natural enemies and the only way to keep them harmless is to suppress them and that letting Muggle-born people into the wizarding world is contaminating it and everything that purebloods hold dear is being threatened."

Nott burst in.

"My father says that the only people who supported You-Know-Who were young fools who should have known better and nearly all of them regretted it."

Draco gave him a careless look. "Well, yes, the ones who went to Azkaban did, I expect."

Potter's face had been twisting further and further.

"He killed my parents," he said again. "How does that have anything to do with -- sound ideas, or whatever? My mother was ... was Muggle-born, like you said; does that make it alright?"

Watcher Draco could see the moment during which his younger self hesitated and then decided to plough on.

"My father says ... he went too far, but it was in the right direction. He says that the purebloods needed a voice of power and the Dark Lord understood that. He says that to be powerful and respected, you have to be feared, and you can't hesitate or be squeamish about acting on your ideals."

Potter's face was quite red by now.

"Really?" he said. "Well my father is dead, but I bet he would have said that yours was talking a load of crap."

Sieve Draco's face tightened.

"Take that back," he said.

"No," Potter said. "You just said that Voldemort was right to try to murder me when I was a baby."

Draco looked just the tiniest bit uncertain. "I ... didn't," he said. "But if I did, well, maybe it's true!"

"Er ..." Zabini said.

"Sometimes you have to do things everybody else is afraid to do!"

Potter curled his fists on his crossed legs. "I'm so sorry I didn't die, then," he said. "I'm sure that would have made you happy, Malfoy!"

He stared at Draco for a second longer, his eyes fierce and just a little bit too bright. Then he grabbed the curtains hanging in folds at the headboard of his bed and shoved them jerkily closed around him.

Nott looked uncomfortable and Zabini a little thoughtful as they silently got ready for bed. Crabbe was frowning and Goyle looked upset. Sieve Draco didn't look at anybody. He sat on his bed in a visibly black mood, white-faced and tense and completely miserable.

A slide took him away from the scene as Zabini extinguished the bobbing witch lights around the walls.

*

It was another Hogwarts corridor when the slide stopped. Near the first flight of stairs up to the Astronomy Tower, Draco thought.

There were three boys sitting against the wall, their legs sprawled out into the corridor and leaving only a narrow walkway for anybody who wanted to get past them. Their bags were tossed haphazardly around them, books spilling out of the one nearest Draco.

There were about fifty chocolate frog cards spread out before them in rows.

"Who was Leda, then?" Potter asked, frowning. Nott leaned forwards to swap two cards around and then squinted at them and swapped them back.

"Greek swan animaga," Zabini said. "There's a legend that says that she actually -- you know -- with another swan, once."

"What's an animaga?"

"Animagus," Nott said. He threw Zabini a quelling look. "Nobody says animaga. Zabini's just showing off his Latin. And it's a wizard who can turn themself into an animal. They say the Transfiguration professor here is one."

Zabini shrugged. "Well, anyway, I don't think you need to worry about learning that far back. The only reason I know is because my mother read the classics to me at home."

"No, Leda's good," Nott said. "She has rarity value; I've seen her go for nine sickles, once or twice."

The small toga-clad figure batted lazy eyelashes at him from the card.

Potter watched her, fascinated.

Zabini reached around him to thwack Nott on the arm. "Don't be an idiot," he said. "He wants to learn about the wizards, not how to trade them."

"He wants to learn about wizarding culture," Nott corrected. "Chocolate frog card trading is part of it."

"Well, alright." Potter moved Leda to one side and picked up the next card. He grinned at whatever the wizard on it was doing and then looked around. "Did we eat all the chocolate frogs?"

Nott scrabbled around near his bag and finally levered himself up off the floor. He clenched his hand around something under a fold of his robes. "Hah!"

Potter looked at the maimed and dusty chocolate frog the other boy held out for him, squirming in his hand. He hesitated and then shook his head.

"Er, no thanks."

Zabini reached past him and took it. "My mother says dust is good for the immune system," he said, mumbling around the chocolate in his mouth.

"Potter, another piece of general knowledge," Nott said. "Mrs Zabini is completely round-the-twist. She enjoys eating dust and killing her husbands in her spare time."

"Oy!" Zabini thwacked him again and Nott laughed, cradling his arm. "The husband thing's never been proven," Zabini said. He looked singularly unbothered by the accusation, though, and Draco wondered suddenly what he really thought about it. Maybe he honestly didn't care. It wasn't as though he ever had time to become attached to any of his stepfathers, after all.

His stomach was aching a bit, because the three of them looked so comfortable -- the hard stone floor notwithstanding -- and because he wasn't there.

Except that then he was.

The three boys on the floor looked up at the sound of footsteps ringing on the stone and Potter tensed. Sieve Draco was flanked by Crabbe and Goyle and it took a moment for them to notice the others. When they did they hesitated; slowed.

"Potter," Draco said. He nodded at the others. He didn't sound anything much, except uncertain. Crabbe and Goyle gave uneasy nods too.

"Malfoy," Potter said. He sounded unfriendly.

Zabini leaned back against the wall, boneless and relaxed as a cat. He was the only one who looked to be enjoying himself.

"Crabbe left his planisphere up at the Astronomy Tower last night," Draco said eventually. "We're going to get it."

Potter made a noncommittal sound. He was still holding the chocolate frog card. He put it down now and Watcher Draco saw that it was Morgan Le Fey. She apparently had something snarled in the back of her complicated lace collar and she was almost tying herself into a knot trying to get it out.

"What are you doing?" Sieve Draco asked eventually.

"None of your business," Potter said. "Nothing that will kill me, which I'm sure will disappoint you."

Draco flushed, uneven spots of pink high in his cheeks. "That's ridiculous," he said. "You're being ridiculous."

Potter stood up, slowly.

"I'm being ridiculous? You said that Voldemort was right to try to murder me. Are you trying to apologise now, or are you just ...?"

"Malfoys don't apologise." Draco drew himself up taller.

"Then you can get stuffed," Potter said. His eyes were bright and strained and a bit desperate looking and Draco wanted to tell his younger self that Potter didn't mean it, couldn't he see that, he just wanted Draco to say sorry. Only Potter did mean it, of course, because Draco wasn't going to say sorry, because Malfoys didn't.

"Come on," Potter said, looking back at Nott and Zabini. "Let's do this in the common room."

Sieve Draco looked stung. "Don't bother," he said. "We were just going."

He led Goyle and Crabbe on, deliberately stepping on the chocolate frog cards as he went. Nott looked annoyed but Zabini was still grinning lazily. "Our dorm is going to be fun," he said.

Draco felt himself fading away, back into the library and the real world.

This was getting unbearably depressing.

*

There was a commotion in the halls on their way back to the dorm from the library; Draco scowling and dragging his feet and avoiding talking to Crabbe or Goyle. They all craned to look, Draco reluctantly and Crabbe and Goyle with relief.

People were chattering excitedly and it took a moment for Draco to see through them.

Potter was being supported by Weasley and Granger, white-faced and grimacing. Granger looked anxious but also excited and Weasley just looked excited. He was bouncing a bit as he walked and jarring Potter who would wince each time and then smile a faint, strained smile at him.

There was a dark stain down one side of his robes, over his ribs.

Draco bit his lip. Of course it's Potter who gets injured. Three of them go out and it's Potter who comes back with blood on his robes. He probably told them to stay back while he went ahead and the bloody idiots let him.

Potter looked around, the strain on his face obvious, and caught sight of Draco. For a moment there was a decidedly odd expression on his face. Then Granger jostled him on his other side and he winced, looking away again.

Then Madam Pomfrey was there, brusque and competent, shooing the other students away. She took the arm that Granger was supporting, brushing the girl aside and telling her to go get cleaned up and stop making such a fuss in the hall. Granger nodded. She cast an anxious look at Potter and gave him a pat on the shoulder but Draco could see that her smile was still trying to break through.

As she turned he caught sight of a flash of gold; something in her inner robe pocket. He almost thought it could have been a goblet, although that seemed a little random. They'd obviously just had a triumph of some sort, but -- would they be triumphant about bringing home a drinking implement?

Maybe that wasn't what it had been.

He followed Potter with his eyes as far as he could still see him, but Pomfrey was bustling him away fairly quickly.