Enslavement

Chapter 5

Touchdown

Snape held the collars in his hands. Meanwhile Malfoy had come over.

"I must be brief," Snape said. "That potion is very delicate and time-consuming, and the Dark Lord deserves nothing less but the best."

"How soon do you expect the trials will be held?" Narcissa asked. There was something about the way she asked the question that told Harry she couldn't have been more uninterested.

"Perhaps after a fortnight from now," answered Snape. His eyes glittered down at Hermione. "Then the truth shall be bared... But I brew another potion for him in increasing regularity, you see. It's more, er, cosmetic and far easier to make."

"Rise," Narcissa ordered at Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

"Oh your deference isn't necessary, seeing as we're no longer at Hogwarts and I your teacher," Snape assured them. Harry could feel his relish at their defeat radiating off his face. "Draco, if you'll be agreeable."

"Of course, Professor."

"You don't have to pretend we're not familiar in front of them, Draco; they're your property after all."

Draco's cheeks turned pink. He mumbled or hissed something like, "Yes, Severus," before taking the proffered collars and getting on his knees.

As he watched the collars being fitted on the three Gryffindors, Snape mused, "I had to answer to why slaves wore silver collars studded with at least three kinds of gemstones. Of course my colleagues understand your wealth but think it's quite wasted on them. I happen to agree."

The ensuing silence was undeniably tense for Malfoy's mother, who seemed not to know where to look. And Snape of course was only too ready to let her endure it.

"Do these shining trinkets suggest a life more pampered than that of an average slave-child at any other Death Eater house I've cared to visit, Narcissa? They eat in the same room you do? Enjoy daily baths? Even have their own rooms, do they? The Dark Lord wouldn't be too pleased."

Narcissa let these words wash over her as she stared at a spot on the floor.

"I supposed we could give them leather collars like our Giffies in the stable or move them there altogether," retorted Narcissa, her voice finely laced with sarcasm.

"Or better yet, the dungeon?" suggested Snape.

Harry almost couldn't control himself at the rush of hatred that filled him as he glared up into Snape's large nostrils. Fortunately he couldn't distinguish them well because of his poor eyesight. Unfortunately his quiet mutiny was painful to his eyes.

"I had hoped it would be the last we saw of it. The only person in this house fond of it has..."

"Perhaps you'll grow to cherish them in his honour then. At least the pretend to use them; I fail to see how the Dark Lord will be thrilled knowing that his simultaneously most prized and despised captives are being pampered by his most loyal followers in the name of Malfoy. Draco, knowing what is required, I expected better of you."

Malfoy had saved the best for last. Before Snape's words, Harry was sure, as Malfoy kneeled in front of him, his two hands holding the collar apart and reaching for his neck, Malfoy was going to give him the tallest, smuggest, most triumphant smirk Harry had ever seen on him. But the words that caught him from behind, over his shoulder, made his throat ripple and his reaching hands to falter. His lips twisted not in a face of arrogance but that of nervousness. Harry's heart stopped working entirely as he closed his eyes and braced himself for the cool metal that would chill his magic for a time unknown.

Staring at the black of his eyes, he felt a soft breeze of breath on the tip of his nose, a brush of nobly soft fingers, and finally, that chill of silver, circular and inescapable at any point, locking and clicking into place around his neck. Unable to breathe, he felt another breath on his face from Malfoy's lips, this time stronger, warmer, but shaken too. He fought with himself whether to open his eyes in defiance or keep them closed and let the horrible moment in which his absolute captivity was expressed pass. With a strange thrill that gripped his heart into a furious pump, he opened his eyes, came face-to-blurry-face with Malfoy's vast grey eyes, and fastened his eyes on them as Malfoy slowly rose to his feet, the both of them avoiding Snape's eye. Harry knew then his defeat was absolute.

"I want nothing to do with them, or any of this," Narcissa hissed, with a quiet ferocity. She grabbed onto her son's shoulders protectively.

"Choice is a luxury long ago relinquished in the victory of Our Lord, Narcissa - you should know this," Snape remonstrated, his mouth twisting harshly. "Merely speaking these words is tantamount to treachery in this climate on both your part and mine. Now, I hope you'll contemplate my advice carefully for your own sake: act fittingly or you have no hope at all. It should be your prayer the Dark Lord never finds reason to suspect you; otherwise this conversation we're having at this moment he will be privy to, and at that moment... you will be forsaken. I should leave now."

Snape gazed down at Draco, who was staring at his feet and shrouded by his mother. He looked nothing more than a child trying to understand a grown-up world. "Draco," Snape addressed, and he swept out of the room.

Draco watched the hem of Snape's dark robes whip out of sight. His eyes zoned out as he seemed to contemplate something serious.

They all listened as the front door thudded closed. Just as Malfoy's mother opened her mouth, Malfoy interrupted her.

"I'll handle them, Mother."

His mother spared him a quick quizzical look before she departed with a soft, "Very well. I'll be in my study."

Malfoy waited for her footsteps to disappear before, with an aura that seemed much denser, his gaze a little mellowed, as if he suddenly had the bearings of an adult, he looked down at them without speaking for a while. Snape's address to him now decidedly sounded like an acknowledgement of his lordship of the manor, and all the responsibilities that came with it.

"I think it's time for your first chore," he said finally. His eyes darted around the dining room; he seemed undecided. "Tibby."

POP!

"Master Draco has called Tibby," breathed Tibby, bowing so deeply her nose nearly kissed the floor. This and the oiliness of her tone seemed to nauseate Hermione.

"Take these slaves to the library and make sure they get through dusting the whole of the A's today."

"Tibby is delighted to take the slaves to the library and make sure they do what they are tasked with, Master Draco."

As Malfoy strode out of the room he tossed behind his shoulder at the elf, "That will be Master Malfoy."

Tibby nearly had heart failure. She welled up and choked on her incredulity.

"Master Malfoy..." she whispered in Malfoy's wake, looking away distantly. Had Harry not known Dobby, he would have rather thought her brimming eyes weren't for the previous Lord of the Manor but cynically for that she was so apologetic for addressing Malfoy incorrectly she was overwhelmed with her fault. Still, it looked a morbidly sorry and sickening sight to see a house-elf so acutely feeling for a master who in all likelihood mistreated her to guess the least, if he had not repented at the end of Harry's second year.

But dutifully, Tibby snorted away the tears and seeming grief, turned around, and kindly requested their compliance: Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed her without a word.

After entering the library and getting to work, having collars on their necks was a new sensation to get used to. It had warmed to Harry's skin and sat very close to his Adam's apple. He imagined he was finding it harder and harder to swallow his spit (he found it tempting to swallow unnecessarily all of a sudden), and harder and harder to see the book he was dusting; though it was surprising for Hermione to see, what came with Harry systematically picking out a book and beginning to dust it was a natural curiosity as to what the book was about. Unfortunately Harry didn't have his glasses to help him.

"My eyes are getting really sore," he said, in a matter-of-fact way.

"You could give them to Malfoy's mother to repair them like I said," repeated Hermione. "She--even though I don't know what to think of her anymore; one moment she's this, the other, that. I think she'll be sympathetic though; you can't do anything if you can't see. At the least you'll make a bad slave."

"Thanks, Hermione," said Harry, at which she made a dismissive noise at him spinelessly taking offence. "Tibby?"

POP!

"At your service, Slave Harry Potter."

"I really don't appreciate that," mumbled Harry.

"But Tibby is told it is what Harry Pot--"

"Yes yes, I know. Never mind. Tibby, can you fix my glasses? I'm really struggling to see."

Predictably, Tibby went quiet as her big bright eyes darted left and right in careful contemplation of the propriety of aiding a slave in such a way, and the possible consequences. Her hands twitched into half-formed fists for a moment; Harry had a sudden flash in his mind of Dobby's bandaged hands after he had punished himself.

"Tibby must be asking Master Malfoy for permission, Tibby thinks," she finally said.

"Okay," said Harry. "Go ask him."

POP!

POP!

"But Tibby must make sure the slaves do what they are tasked with," squeaked Tibby, assuming, most probably rightly, Malfoy would ask for an update on their work the moment she saw her. She mustered some courage to ignore their slightly incredulous eyes, and after her big eyes rolled around them and ascertained how far they were in their work, eyes plastered studiously and desperately on the floor, she disappeared with another POP!

It was another sad low for them that a house-elf was overlooking them and their productivity as a superior, a supervisor of a kind, that they had to perform and show they deserved it before they could ask for basic requests such as having one's requisite glasses fixed.

"Remind me again why you didn't summon Dobby so he could break us out way before we ended up in this bloody shithole from the previous shithole we were in?" Ron asked.

"Becau--" began Harry, but Hermione cut across him.

"Because Dumbledore told him not to!" Hermione growled. "That will also be the last time that question is asked together with Harry's theories on Snape."

"But why, Hermione?" Ron whined. "Why did he bloody have to? We could've been out of there like that!"

Hermione took a deep breath, forcing her calm. "Because then they would have been on a nation-wide manhunt looking for Harry and us. Think of how many people who could've been tortured to force our whereabouts out of them. Dumbledore asked us to stay put and so we did. He wouldn't tell us to do anything to hurt us."

"After letting Harry go to that graveyard with an unsuspected Portkey, I wouldn't be so sure..."

"Oh my goodness, you're going to bring that up again?" Hermione said incredulously.

Ron mumbled something inarticulate.

"For the last time--" screeched Hermione, nearly pulling her hair out and certainly squeezing every word out through her teeth.

"I get it, I get it," snapped Ron. "We've gone through this enough times already."

"I'm glad it's finally sunk in that thick skull of yours! Too long enough! What, only two years?"

"All right, all right," called Harry, kicking into moderator mode after being experienced in it for some time now; Ron and Hermione have bickered like this since the moment they laid eyes on each other. All he needed to do now to extinguish any sliver of a chance of another exchange, and better yet, have them avoiding each other's eye, was to suggest they should just get hitched and had his blessing.

"It wasn't me who was making nursery songs out of phrases from my beloved textbooks... Ouch!" shouted Ron, as the book he had just been hit with thudded onto the floor. "Harry, did you see--?"

"You deserved it. Now shush."

"What I w--" began Ron, but he was interrupted by Tibby's return.

"Master Malfoy cannot allow Tibby to repair Slave Harry Potter's glasses," Tibby told Harry, with a slight dip of her head. Harry couldn't help but wonder if his request would've met a more positive decision had it come before Snape's visit.

"Oh," Harry said, short for words.

"Tibby must be going, Slave Harry Potter." And she snapped her fingers and disappeared again.

"I said ask his mother, not him," said Hermione. "Obviously his ego - much like two you - gets in the way."

"You mean an ego much over the quota any human is allowed, let alone us," corrected Ron. "Who would deny a person having his glasses fixed? That's sick, even by Malfoy's standards."

"That's exactly where his standards are," replied Harry, gazing down at the blurry book he couldn't read, let alone know whether he had dusted completely clean or not. He had a sudden stroke of inspiration to deliberately be a bad 'slave', because he was effectively handicapped, and act worse than it was. "I'll just have to bother and bother him until he loses it and fixes them. Sending Tibby back and forth wouldn't fall under abuse in your worldview, would it, Hermione?"

"In this particular instance, no," answered Hermione tightly, apparently taking some offence. "You need your glasses - without them you're basically no less an invalid than a wine-soaked Fat Lady buried under rolls and rolls of her own fat on the floor of her portrait after an eating binge with Violet in the kitchens."

Why can't we just win for once? Harry asked himself, now certainly of the opinion that females had an age-old compulsion to always appear superior in the fields of wit and sarcasm as though to compensate for their general inferiority in, perhaps, the world of work and decision-making.

"And, do elves feel tediousness?" Harry then asked, against his instincts of self-preservation. "Oh why don't I just find out myself? Tibby?"

There was a loud pop, and Tibby reappeared. "What more can Tibby do for Slave Harry Potter?"

"A lot more," muttered Harry. "Er, Tibby, could you ask Malfoy if he could fix my glasses for me?"

It was very clear by how still Tibby stood and the quizzical furrowing of her scrunched forehead that she was working out if she should inform Harry that her master was hardly going to change his mind minutes after her first attempt; Harry's question to Hermione was answered.

"Tibby will be right back, Slave Harry Potter," Tibby finally said, and she vanished.

"I swear, if she says Slave Harry Potter one more time..." snarled Ron.

When Tibby returned seconds later she was shaking like a leaf.

"Master Malfoy doesn't want to repair Slave Harry Potter's glasses," she whispered, her voice catching.

"What did he do to you?" Hermione demanded, looking appalled. "Did he shout at you?"

"Master Malfoy has every right to shout at Tibby for angering his nobleness, Slave Granger," said Tibby softly.

"No he doesn't!" exploded Hermione. "Tibby, you don't have to put up with Malfoy whenever he feels like a mood swing for goodness--!"

"Tibby, please ask--" began Harry.

"Harry, I swear I'll stop being your friend if you send her back," she hissed.

Harry did send Tibby back, and forth, numerous times, and Hermione's threat only extended to the silent treatment sprinkled with dirty looks at him. Ron enjoyed himself for the first time in a long while as Hermione's anger for once did not lie on his side.

In spite of all Harry's numerous attempts, Malfoy didn't repair his glasses but paid him a visit that night in his bedroom. Minutes before, he was back at the escritoire penning down another batch of emotions and the undulating highs and lows he had felt during that day. Malfoy found him on his bed staring up at the canopy again, when his mind was most buoyant and easily swept away by the streams of daydreams. This time he was taken by the memory of what happened after Voldemort touched down on Hogwarts.

McGonagall was just about to shove Colin and Dennis Creevey into the fireplace to Harry's relief when the flames roared and surged green, and the face of a woman with huge bulging eyes, a wide heavy mouth, and a bow on top of her head appeared and said in a hugely off-putting sweet simper, "Going somewhere, little children?"

The younger students screamed just as something dark flew past McGonagall's window. Unshaken by the woman in the fire as though she had her number, McGonagall looked towards her window and went over to check it. Meanwhile, the face in the fire vanished as the green fire rose and roared again, replaced by that of Dumbledore.

"Hogwarts," the green face announced, at which McGonagall jumped in her heels, and at which Harry felt the tiniest thrill of relief in that deep voice, "avoid using the fireplaces as from now - they are being monitored by the Ministry; it has fallen."

"Albus?" breathed McGonagall in shock, a hand to her mouth. "What is happening?"

"Minerva--" But before Dumbledore could reply any further, her question was repeated by several other echoing voices from the fireplace, probably from the other professors recently disallowed from cramming their students into their fireplaces to safety.

"...The bloody hell is going on?" cried Professor Sinistra, whose voice Harry had never heard sound so distressed and so rude to Dumbledore.

"Albus, something--something dark just flew past my window," McGonagall said, her chin quivering. "I don't know what it is... I--"

"Death Eaters, Minerva," answered Dumbledore gravely, and the cacophony of voices from the fireplaces fell into silence. "Hogwarts has been surrounded."

It wasn't this fact that frightened Harry more than that it was Dumbledore who said it, and the succinct way in which he did it.

"Surrounded?" said McGonagall, in a high voice, clutching onto her tartan cloak with a bleached hand.

"I cannot advise an escape route over the fireplace as it is being monitored as we speak--" Dumbledore's face flickered as the flames threatened to surge again. The voice of the toad-like woman broke through his face.

"On one of your little heroic speeches again, are we, Dumbledore? No one has the temerity let alone the wherewithal to threaten the Ministry of--"

Dumbledore's voice distorted as he struggled to force himself through the toad-like lady's face, but Harry, and McGonagall, it seemed, couldn't figure out what he was saying. The flames rose and spat again, and when they subsided to the logs below, Dumbledore's face was gone.

"Oh dear," said McGonagall quietly. She turned to look at her office crammed with students in every corner.

"It seems the Ministry of Magic is unaware it has been infiltrated. Then again Miss Umbridge wasn't the sharpest--" She stopped herself, perhaps thinking it unbefitting of an adult to throw insults to a person not there to defend herself. "Students, I'm afraid I don't know what to do..." McGonagall's eyes welled up as she stared down at them, perhaps disillusioned and appalled by her lack of leadership. "We have no orders to follow, Dumbledore reckons Death Eaters have surrounded the castle, and even the Ministry of Magic itself is now virtually an enemy..."

But then there were screams and mutters that travelled from outside in the corridor, through the classroom, and into the office. McGonagall jerked backwards in fright and the students in her office screamed when something the likes of a Patronus floated over their heads and stopped just short of her. The silvery mist-like form was that of a phoenix, and from its beak a deep, familiar voice issued.

"To the Great Hall, quickly!"

The phoenix, which was much like the silver doe they had seen minutes earlier and had served the same function of communication, swirled and vanished into thin air. Before the message could register to Harry in the midst of his astonishment, McGonagall yelled, "To the Great Hall, students!"

And there was an even madder rush out into the corridor. The tide of bopping heads, crisscrossing legs, and scattering feet spilled into the classroom and the moonlit corridor as they all ran for the Great Hall for their lives.

"Why didn't Dumbledore just contact her with that thing in the first place instead of doing it over the fireplace and waste all that time?" panted Ron, as he was jostled by the running crowd around them.

Holding both Ron's and Harry's hands, Hermione replied, "Obviously because not every teacher is in the Order of--" As they ran Harry stepped on her foot before she could reveal more. "Oh, sorry!" she squeaked.

When they rushed into the corridor bearing the doors of the Great Hall, they found a sea of what seemed like half of the school surge through the doors like a tidal wave while teachers had their wands out and cast their eyes in every direction for signs of danger.

"Pomona, where's Dumbledore? What's happening?" called McGonagall, as she ran with her high heels clicking loudly on the floor towards Professor Sprout, whose bulges were wobbling with every left and turn right of her feet as she kept on the lookout. Like her, McGonagall's wand was ready in her hand.

By this time Ron had found Ginny's hand, and Gryffindor mingled with the other streams of students and formed a confluence into the Great Hall while Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout had an anxious exchange. Harry just caught some of the latter's words before he was carried inside: "We don't know where Dumbledore is, if they've caught him or not...!"

He lost contact with Ron and Hermione for the third time but they were in the Great Hall already. Relieved that they weren't as squashed anymore as the one stream separated into the four House tables, they went over to the Gryffindor table and plunged into their usual seats. This time Hermione, instead of assuming her usual seat opposite Harry and Ron, took one on Harry's other side. Soon Seamus, Dean, Neville, Parvati, Lavender, Colin, Dennis, and Ginny took theirs around them.

"It's gonna be all right," Harry soothed the Creevey brothers with a smile, after spotting their white faces. The hurried rush of the other students around them wasn't helping their nerves either. Knowing he was probably lying to their faces, for the first time, Harry initiated contact: he reached over and held Colin and Dennis around the shoulders. On any other day Colin would have zoom into his middle in a blur of red and grey before Harry spotted or heard him. The brothers nodded diffidently at him. As he rubbed their arms, he peered over his shoulder at the Slytherin table: Pansy Parkinson, Goyle, Crabbe, and Blaise Zabini sat slightly huddled together in a small tight circle. Malfoy was not among them.

It was a few minutes before all the students were inside and seated in the Great Hall, which Harry scanned and saw that at least two thirds of the school was present and the rest had presumably escaped through the fireplaces to safety while the teachers were outside keeping an eye out for danger.

Around the House table there was a lot of the kind of murmuring that went around in between an event. The feeling in the air to Harry was rather like that of the time when the contestants of the Tri-Wizard Tournament were to be announced.

"Why did they bring us to one place and give the Death Eaters one huge target?" asked Seamus furiously, as though he knew all there was to know about tactical defence. "And don't give me that 'we're stronger together than we are apart' crap. You'd figure it'd make things more difficult for them if they had to hunt us out one by one all over the castle. I mean, they wouldn't waste their time doing it."

"So if you were stuck in some unused classroom on the seventh floor," said Ginny, rushing over her words in seeking to no doubt relieve her anxiety and vent out at something, "do you think you'd survive without food? Because no one would know you're there - you'd be stuck. And they'll eventually find you while you're trying to find your fellow Housemates. If we're apart they'd know all they had to do was wait it out until we grew hungry and lonely and desperate and flush ourselves out!"

"Blimey, it was a bloody question, no need to get a bloody eppy over it," muttered Seamus. "Honestly I'm not seeing all that's great about her," he whispered to Dean, who had dated Ginny. Dean didn't dignify the words with a response but looked away from Seamus as though his words were tedious and he had heard them countless times before.

Harry knew it had been less than ten minutes but then it had felt like an hour before the doors of the Great Hall flew open and made a tremendous thud that shook their chests and spell-light flashed before their eyes. The students clung onto each other and watched in awe as the Death Eaters outnumbered and overpowered and made quick work of the teachers. They were then held up, muffled with strips of cloth, and pushed inside as the Death Eaters proceeded into the Great Hall, a seemingly endless line of dark-cloaked figures snaking its way up.

The Death Eaters, about thirty of them, parted ways and surrounded the Great Hall, spreading along the walls until there was about eight or ten standing along the longest sides of the Hall - some of whom held the teachers - four on either sides of the doors, and eight in a neat line between the four House tables and the High Table. Between these Death Eaters was a space just big enough for one more person to stand in. The figure standing closest to Harry, the first in the line of eight, was comparatively short. It only took the shivering hood, the stout build, and the missing little finger on one of the hands partly shrouded in the figure's oversized dark robes to put to Harry's mind a twitchy stooped little man he had met two years ago.

"It's him!" he hissed at Hermione, who turned her quizzical frown on him.

"Who?" she asked.

"That perfidious arse Wormtail!"

"You mean my ex-rat?" Ron asked.

"Yeah!" replied Harry. "He's still a rat all right even if he's your ex."

"Ex-rat," Ron was quick to clarify. "You left the rat part out."

"It's no use getting worked up over it, Harry!" Hermione hissed back. "Don't draw attention to us, please! Shush!"

Another figure, fourth from Harry before the space, stood leaning back slightly, and Harry could see wild, straggly hair dangling from the hood. But before he could scan the fifth Death Eater standing beside the woman and before the space between them, a sudden silence smothered all murmurs and shuffling: Harry turned in his seat and followed the light footsteps of another man he knew.

The man's hood was down unlike every other Death Eaters' and showed off a stunning sheet of diaphanous silvery blond hair sloping luxuriously over broad shoulders onto his back without a single lock out of place, making the man's pointy profile all the more defined with his clean brow, upturned nose, and hard jaw line contrasting the curvy slope of his hair. He held a cane aloft in one gloved hand as the scales of his boots reflected the soft candlelight of the Great Hall and as they clicked in step until he reached the front of the Hall, stood just in front and in the middle of his fellow Death Eaters, and smiled grandly at the students below him.

"Rise," Malfoy intoned.

Harry couldn't remember this part...

"Potter," Malfoy called. He heard a door snap closed, and he snapped out of his thoughts.

He rose off the bed and sat up to see Malfoy standing at his door, one hand on the doorknob. The way Malfoy's hair curved over his ear and over his shoulder sent chills down Harry's spine.

Malfoy closed the door and as he approached the bed and folded his arms, said, "You wanted your glasses repaired?"

It took a moment for Harry to place the words from the daze in the wake of his daydreams.

"Er, yeah. I can't see."

Utterly oblivious, Harry didn't notice how it annoyed Malfoy that he was going about things so casually as though his master weren't standing two metres in front of him. He grabbed his glasses from the drawer of the escritoire, went over to Malfoy, and proffered them. Harry's comfort with his room did not impress Malfoy either; his head appeared to be quivering fit to explode.

Harry raised his eyebrow in query.

"On the floor, now," Malfoy commanded, his words forced and clipped.

Harry's eyebrows rose higher. But as he thought, Okay... and internally rolled his eyes he went down on his knees in front of Malfoy and looked up, still holding up his glasses at him. He wanted nothing from him but that.

Malfoy of course stretched the moments out as he stared down the length of his little upturned nose at him. Finally he took the glasses out of his hand, slipped out his wand from two wide separate loops on top of his belt, pointed at his glasses, and muttered, "Reparo." There was a cracking noise like glass or ceramic chipping, but when he held the glasses down to Harry, they looked brand new.

"Thanks," Harry said, as he collected them.

Malfoy stared down at him for a while more before he ordered, "On the bed."

Harry's eyes lingered on Malfoy's, for a moment allowing the craziest thought to frighten him, before he rose to his feet, climbed on his bed, and folded his legs underneath him.

"Let's make one thing clear here," Malfoy began. "You don't abuse my house-elf like that by sending her back and forth to me, you understand?"

"Perfectly," Harry answered promptly.

When Malfoy didn't speak further but continued to glare at him, Harry asked, "Was that all?"

"Shut up."

Harry's eyebrows rose again, but he held his tongue.

Malfoy kept quiet again. Then his eyes roamed onto Harry's silver collar, and then his robes; Harry's toes scrunched uncomfortably.

"Think you got it easy, don't you? Well, frankly, you do, and that might change soon; you heard what Snape was saying: The Dark Lord wouldn't be too pleased with my mother pampering you and your friends."

This was just the perfect time for Harry to give a sharp reply, perhaps even a taunt, but Harry, in spite of his screaming instincts, kept quiet against the words hanging on his tongue and the sudden quickening of his pulse as his mind nearly lapsed into a familiar exclusive daze it fell into whenever he and Malfoy went sparring intensely. Even Malfoy's pause was subconsciously intended for Harry to deftly insert some stinging retort.

"You're responsible for Tibby's frayed nerves," Malfoy said smoothly, as if he had expected nothing from him all along, "so you'll have to do without a house-elf from now on."

Malfoy started turning around while looking closely at him as though suspecting he was at least thinking of something sarcastic - and he was quite right (Argh, damn, now I don't have a house-elf to play with anymore...) - but finally strode over to the door and stepped out.

He might not have a house-elf at his beck and call anymore, but at least he had his glasses back. His immediate wish had been nothing but that.

Hopefully it was the last personal visit he had from Malfoy.