Meanwhile

"So," said Ron, pushing aside a low-hanging branch and holding out Harry's wand, "had any ideas?"

"How did you get away?" asked Harry in amazement, taking his wand from Ron.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It's aerodynamic. It's sound. It's real.

"Malfoy!" spits brother Weasley across the room. "What are you doing to Harry's wand?"

"Bugger off." I point it at him, all eleven inches suddenly turned traitorous, and dare him without words to say anything more. He doesn't.

Each of my captives glowers exclusively at me. The other jailers are dimwitted and they know that; they know that it wasn't Bulstrode or Goyle or Crabbe that led the Inquisitorial Squad to where their little company was fluttering around like tired, backward moths that didn't know light from darkness. Maybe sheer size grabbed them up for delivery in the end, but I leered around the corner before the short-lived scuffle and felt privy with my plans for that split second. Bulstrode slaps her wide thigh and then the back of her neck in rapid succession, offering no explanation other than a noncommittal noise when I look at her. Goyle is off to the side, kicking at the wall. Three steady thuds. The other members of the Squad look around nervously. I feel malice rolling off of my captives in buckets, in waves, in hurricanes that I don't stand down to because my gravitational force can govern them. It does. For now. All eyes are drawn to me like leeches seeking out blood. Starving. For answers, maybe, or searching for an escape.

Remembrance:

"You will remain here until I return and make sure none of these escape."

Yes, all right. Sure. Ma'am.

This room, the office, is smaller than I would have chosen, but the moths are bound to each other and a heavy piece of old furniture with silk cushions. Dinner. That's over in the corner, closer to Goyle than me, the far quieter captives clustered around the nucleus of red-haired Weasleys, the flames meant to fuel them. Their conviction stems from this rolling, snowballing hatred that's coming right at me. When I turn over the wand in my hand, pointing the tip away from the brother, everyone looks relieved but the air is just as tense and charged. Constructions fall apart. Worries are tangible. Crabbe sniffs so loudly that the noise, a wet snaaark, fills the room with watery congestion. I fear that he may dribble this loose snot from his nose or - perish the thought - lose it in some corner to absorb the dust. But he only looks at me. Nondescript.

I measure the wand between my fingers again. It's about eleven inches, right, give or take, and longer than mine. The wood is sweet and supple like a child just come to term, like that scruffy kid in First Year with the broken glasses that turned down my hand, and I suppose it's sycamore or holly. Something that'd smell fragrant if it weren't sanded down against the grain and covered in varnish. Anyone's guess what's inside, although The Rumors say it's a phoenix feather or something mythical, fitting, life and death. I balance the wand between my fingers. There's a groove at the base my thumb slides over again and again, a little detail I doubt even its owner ever noticed, and after closer inspection I almost toss it down for the plebian teeth marks near there that I also stroke across. God, what does he do - chew on it? Those indentions in soft relief caused only mild damage, but to imagine his mouth grazing across that bud - in tests, during homework, while bored and brooding . . . well, that's just something a bit too dangerous in itself to think about right now.

While I don't particularly care how much I'm showing my captives, I still don't like the looks sister Weasley is giving me. In part rage and part envy, I can tell even from here she'd gladly be the one handling this wand over me. She'd take it up like a blessed child and smooth its length from head to toe, dust it off and dreaming of boiling it to be rid of germs and parasites. Rather than touch its defects and weigh them, she'd see only the sleek build and the color of its wood, ripened with age. Not teeth marks but how the end tapers off just so or how the handle was made for its owners slim, rough fingers. She'd give it a little swish-and-flick to test it, to confirm that it still worked after I touched it, perhaps producing some flowers or casting a silly little jinx on me - bound and vulnerable by this time - that'd make my toes swell or eyes itch. Then wrapping it up carefully in the very velour of her cloak, she'd locate its owner and whisk it off to him with enough flourishes to choke a calligrapher.

"Malfoy," calls sister Weasley this time. So cool and confident, though the hatred is palpable. "Harry isn't going to let you -"

"Shut up." My tongue twists and slips over the hex I had ready in case my concentration was broken again. I give up. Maybe later.

Bulstrode slaps her thigh again. It happens in intervals just like Longbottom's sighs and the Weasleys' interruptions. Clockwork. Okay, here's the wand again, being measured between my fingers again, even though I already know its length - I've known before coming into this cramped room that has silk on the cushions and dust in the corners - and what it's made of and what may or may not be inside it. Eleven inches, holly or something just as soft, and an immortal feather.

And what does the past hold?

History is a cycle, Draco. The Dark Lord rose; and so he will rise again.

Didn't he fall once? (Oh yeah.)

Lessons learned. (A smile full of needles. Dazzling.)

Oh. (...)

It's going to be different.

Oh. (I want to go outside it's so hot and smells like old incense in here and the sun isn't too high yet.)

You'll understand soon enough.

Oh. (I want iced tea or lemonade and maybe some of those ham sandwiches if I can just find a house elf.)

I remember how he looked. There's no way around the memory, not when I'm holding a piece of it, a piece of evidence right here in between hands eleven inches apart. Light marks on the wood, like the absentminded doodles bored students draw on their desks during class. "Die Mudbloods dies" in Potions (surprisingly not my make: I do not stoop to the absence of commas at critical junctures), clouds and the sun promising cruel summertime freedom in Arithmancy, Latin verbs in Charms alongside an inky checkerboard that's been added onto throughout the years. R & H FOREVER. Heart with an arrow, no blood, smiling stick figures joining what are ostensibly hands to make one acute angle. I smudge the eyes and the ink stays on my thumb for a few days. Graduating years, declarations of boredom, shitty art. A lot of work is put into doing nothing and so the quest to vegetate, to doodle little houses or doggies for the next student to see year after year. God awful. Sometimes I respond if I can, if I can't be seen: in the bathroom, third year, trying to mind my own business while I'm going at it, though the intellectualism of ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, MY GIRLFRIEND IS HOT, AND SHE GIVES GOOD HEAD TOO stares at me. For the witty poet I make an exception to my silence and jot I know she does beneath it. It is childish. I'm about to scratch it out but my mind wanders and I leave it. Later message and reply are scrubbed off the wall, the unfortunate detention duty for someone. Clean the graffiti off the walls in here with your toothbrush (or with your tongue if you talk back to me again), slave! I probably gave the order at some point. The wand sails through the air, graffiti and all, and I catch it before it even reaches me so I can sooner see the look on his face, scrunched like a performing contortionist, but then his attention is distracted by Umbridge and I'm forced to withdraw to this cramped room with my fellow jailers.

Detentions in the bathroom. Forced manual labor. He would have been better off with me. This I know. There is someone in my house, younger than I, an Anthony or Louis that has scabs all over his elbows, still pulls pigtails on girls, and cheats on tests as practiced adulteresses do on husbands. It's an art form for him. One tap, true; two taps, false. Feather to the ceiling or any other compass point if it's during multiple choice. Essays are harder, but not impossible. Mirrors, wandering eyes that move too quickly to be caught, dropped quills, sudden need for more parchment or a fresh inkwell - must whisper to a classmate rather than annoy the teacher with a high, whiney tone. It's okay, it's fine. He's not that remarkable of a student anyway so letting him pass requires no dignity lost on part of the tutor. He'll destroy himself later when he thinks he can handle a charm that he really cannot in a tight situation or when he makes a cauldron explode, but students always come and go. Then one day the impossible happens: he is stricken there, palms up and painted red, crib notes once stashed in his sleeve spread out across the table like a revealed deck of cards; he is quaking in his seat with this dark, imposing entity staring down her nose at him.

And this is how it went:

What are these, then?

She coughs and struts. She picks up the crib notes and arranges them as if they were alphabetical, devoting a few seconds to each page. Definitions. The difference between Grindylows and Red Caps. Whether werewolves have the same rights as humans. Dates and statistics. Names. Underhanded cheating at its finest - later I tell him I've never been prouder, that he's never been more Slytherin to get away with it for so long. He just keeps crying and holding his hand. Everyone knows he cheats, but now they fix their stares upon him like he just grew a second head, the wolf pack that casts out the weakness so they can keep moving. He has betrayed only himself, but the details of how are muddled: he claims she just knows these things and I can't disprove that. Maybe the work of an anti-cheating spell on the test.

I'm very disappointed. (She writes a big "0 / 30" at the top of his partially completed test before ripping it up and then tossing the spray into his face as though it were confetti that meant nothing.) See me after class. The rest of you - stop staring. Ten minutes left. (Groans and the heartbroken, thoroughly disturbed Anthony or Louis that can only wait and wait and wait for class to be over.)

He's given detention with her for a week. He goes through four nights of the seven demanded, four sessions that last hours longer than I want to imagine, before I intervene. The first and second he comes in whimpering and goes to his room immediately. Serves him right to do some actual work. He's lucky I'm not forcing him to polish all the pictures frames on the third floor without magic. Whatever she gave him looks draining but not destructive. Copying lines, probably. That is when the third night drops and he walks in even faster, catching our attention regardless of how inconspicuously he tries to move, but he stumbles around the hard furniture in the common room. Pansy stares at me until I give up and go to the dormitory he shares with the fellows in his year: I knock and he says he's just tired. Fair enough. In the morning I brush my teeth and look down to rinse in the basin. There are several wadded paper towels in the trash bin nearby spotted darkly with blood that still looks fresh. I don't drop my toothbrush and squeal or race right away to him for answers - it is just blood, after all, and he may have cut himself shaving. And then it's nighttime again, a few hours after he left warily wearing a big, dark sweater that's emblazoned with our crest; he comes in just as before, crying again, but there's something dripping down from behind the long, woolen sleeve and I draw the line. I help him clean off, reprimanding him for the tears, but I can't help feeling unsettled by the word written in his own handwriting across the top of his right hand, written in cuts that leak badly. Cheater. Failure. Lucius telling me about a minion of the Dark Lord being forced to swallow pins against his will with magic each time he tries to speak. His stomach tears and ruptures in the end and Lucius laughs. It's the punchline. I'm seven. Failure. The gauze I wrap around his hand is old and a little stale and the emergency disinfectant is primitive, but we don't want to go to Pomfrey about this. He's crying again. I smooth his hair. I tell him it'll be taken care of even when the gauze darkens just under the surface. I throw on my school uniform and pin on the silver badge over my collarbone. Maybe it's higher than recommended, but I want her to see that first, to know my opinion holds water and won't be forgiving with cracks and holes. That I'm not forgiving and that I refuse to stoop, to please. In the hallway I walk steadily. He tells me before I leave about this quill, dark like tar, one that's charmed to cut into the skin what the writer is composing with their blood. Not horrifying, not by a long shot, but still not excusable. I sneer, I push, I force dogged work. Another victim of her detention is retreating from the room, kept longer, his back to me and his head bent with arms drawn up close. I wonder what's written on his hand and it's later that I know, but for right now I'm walking into her office with my chin high. Just like Lucius taught me. No backing down. I'm not here to scribble. She smells like sour milk and the novelty plates on her desk make my stomach curl worse than why I'm here. I think I caught her at a bad time.

I delegate. I bargain. I assure her that Anthony (that's it) will learn better from his own house because he is someone with whom adult authority figures are jokers that pass each year. I say anything to make her crooked, wide-mouthed grin become even more pronounced, just so she thinks my punishment will involve writing epithets with a scalpel across his back. She hands the remainder of his detention over to me. I leave. It's on the way back that I wonder if perhaps that other victim's punishment could have been made my responsibility too. But while I'm in there, I stand next to one table that's splattered with blood where the lacy cover was pushed back to prevent stains. A miniature slaughter. Some parchment is left half-rolled, covered with the inelegant structure of a dictation, and I stare at it greedily when she turns away to busy herself, to write up a few suggested methods of punishment for Anthony to take along. I swipe one page and know she won't miss it. I must not lie. I must not lie. I must not lie? The handwriting is more messy and stilted the farther down it goes, dwelling closer to the edges like the nervous scooting prior to a first kiss. It's obvious that she enjoys this victim's punishment; arguing to hold her position here would have been fruitless. Anthony is happy and I put the pilfered page beneath my pillow, folding it carefully to make sure its words won't stain the slip. It's still there. I work him like a house elf for the remaining three nights and he cries again, but Cheater fades away with enough time. I don't tell any of the other teachers about this. I don't tell anyone about that night when I imagine commanding the lost victim to bend down and scrub the walls as I slide my hands under the sheets. In the morning. Eggs. Bacon. Rolls with not enough poppy seeds. Withdrawn green eyes open across the hall, soggy like cereal with too much milk. His hand, wrapped and packaged, curves around a spoon; and she at the front table snivels at us both with her sharp, rotting perfume. I must not lie.

"Goyle."

I must not lie.

"Yeah?"

I must not . . .

"Keep an eye on them."

They've been watching me since being bound and forced to sit, but now I have their full attention too. I sneer. Goyle doesn't ask what I mean, he just knows; the same goes for everyone else, including Crabbe and Bulstrode, although she has a protest snaking up her throat. Taking the wand and leaving the room, old and heavy door swinging shut as low conversation about why rustles out of the ashen silence like a reborn phoenix, I go down the open corridor. The long cloak snaps angrily at my ankles. I walk, jog, run, sprint as fast as I can, not looking, not trying to make sense of the hallways or the portraits screaming by. Offices become solid walls with only the occasional ornament, and then I am lost. Gifford Ollerton, his arms outstretched to reap in praise, ignores me as I pass his home on the north side; thickened, cooling giant's blood overwhelms the canvas's bottom edge but cannot overflow into reality. At the next juncture I turn, spiraling in as I take every right I can. After a number that'd normally demand my return to the first hallway, I find only a dead-end with two sets of doors. One for boys and the other for girls - placards with silhouettes bearing pointy hats (the woman exclusively in triangle dress and holding a broom) prevent confusion - though both are crusty from disuse. A paper sign to the left of the "boys" door warns KEEP CLEAR OF DOOR!! OR YOU'LL GET WHACKED WITH IT! and below that is the spidery lettering of someone with too much free time and a felt marker: Really? I would love it.

No one tries to exit as I enter. I am not whacked. There is nothing to enjoy. The hinges squeal, a fair child with needles being driven into his feet, and I latch onto the edge of the first sink I come to. Ceramic cracks beneath my hand but I do not let go. I'd rather be cut than fall. What time is it? How long has it been since I saw his indignant expression in Umbridge's room? Since I told brother Weasley to shut that goddamn mouth and leave me alone? Since I smeared the blood - on the table across from all those novelty plates - over my fingers to suck at later while I read over every line of I must not lie before bed? (I left red fingerprints on my sheets, but the material was dark anyway, and no one dared to ask.) I can't begin to imagine, and - oh, the wand, there it is. I am holding it.

I just see it now:

Sister Weasley grins in the terrible way that Voldemort does, pale lips drawn back until they disappear, and points it at my forehead.

The mirrors are broken. Shattered. The remaining pieces fan out, silver petals, edges sharp enough to cut if run along the skin, reflecting the dim light source that comes from nowhere and everywhere. My face glitters and splits and I press against one half-whole area, willing the shards back together silently, unable to force the word out of my mouth. Reparo. Reparo. Re-fucking-paro you accursed wand and my fingers are numb but still feel the teeth marks and

"Reparo!"

I jump. Who's there? Who said that? No one. Me. I'm no one. I said it. My voice is foreign and torn and tired. The first mirror repairs itself effortlessly, bringing its entire puzzle back together, reassembling, the crushed egg dropped from too high. I turn the wand to my chest and say the incantation again: my voice sounds the same, like it isn't my own, like it's only an echo of a person condemned behind a wall or stuck down a well. I do not repair like the mirror. My gaping holes are left unattended. I haven't slept in days. Maybe a week. What time is it?

Into the stall. I'm going to throw up. Clean it up for me - that's your detention. Mop up this floor. Make these walls spotless. Stop dawdling over there and staring at me, glaring at me, wishing me ill, and let me touch your hand and lap up the blood. I'll bend over backwards. I'll do a handstand. Come over here and press your knees against the toilet with me. I'm taller, but you're stronger. I know how you play Quidditch, but I'm begging to discover something, everyone is just dying for this bit: are you a pitcher or a catcher? May I quote you? You aren't sitting, but may I push in your stool? Do you find that hilarious like I do? I put your wand in between my teeth. I line up the evidence of your mouth with my own and I'm not surprised to find your teeth aren't too straight. I forgive you. I'll make my own indentations, some that are light and could be confused with yours at first glance, if you ever glance at all. There. Like a mold. I'm fumbling with my robes, the belt beneath them, and then my pants; that's why I have to hold your wand like this. Just stand there and don't say anything. I'm going to be sick all over myself and then I'm going to jerk off to your crumbling, hateful face. Please don't say anything. I'm so romantic, aren't I? I'm beautiful, right? You must not lie . . .

"You can't!"

"You're no one, Malfoy."

"I know."

I must not lie either. I can't right now. My hands are so cold down there and my shoulder finds the wall of this enclosed space. Don't look away. I need to keep seeing you, just like that. Just like . . . that . . . move a little closer and stop staring at it like you've never seen one before, like you don't have one stowed away either. Eleven inches for your wand - can it speak for you? Maybe when I'm washing my hands off afterward and wiping the wand I'll be able to lie, but right now everything is spinning and glowing in here and I think I'm going to

Shut up. Shut up right now. Your voice hurts to hear sometimes.

Running water. I scrub at my hands after I put everything away. I wet my hair and try to bring the buoyancy back. Gel cakes on my fingers. The door passes, crying, the portraits and the halls do too - left, left, left, left - until I'm back where I started and where I ran from. I hear voices, loud but hushed, and I know before I even begin to push open the door what will happen. My hands are too wet. Sister Weasley knocks me down and takes the wand from me and my insides scream. It's mine! She'll strip the wood and give him the shadow of it with the phoenix feather just peaking through a crack in the wood. All of the magic will tumble out of it if the hole isn't given a stopper. Her brother kicks me in the stomach and I'm pushed over by the others, all unconscious by the fireplace. How did they get loose? (I don't have the mind to ask aloud.) Goyle's wide maw burbles with slugs - oh, that's familiar, what a nice touch - and Bulstrode's skin is flaky like a shedding reptile's. That wand, my wand, yours, she points it at me and something is said but her smile is so distended and evil and I see Riddle still lurking under her skin, I just know it, how can you trust her . . . my skin ripples and wing-like protrusions sprout and then they slap Spellotape over my mouth so I can't keep screaming for you, for us.

They pass me another kick and everything goes dark and I've never been more afraid, Potter. Harry. They'll take you and break you open. They'll gnaw on your wand until it's nothing - the wand that, to them, is the one that Didn't Kill Pettigrew and Couldn't Save Diggory, things you're sure I do not know about you. But I do. I do. I do. I must not lie. And it hurts. They're greedy. I just want . . . oh, I forgive you. Now please forgive me.

The final thought before the curtain drops. The absurdly short, silent soliloquy. Blood rushes to my head and everything tips over. I can't breathe. The door slams and I know they've gone to meet with you, to save you in the only way they know how, but it's all a trick.

"Someday, I'll take you away."

Exeunt omnes, manet Draco.