Thinking about Draco Malfoy

Harry spends his last weeks at Hogwarts thinking about Draco Malfoy. Not that he does it on purpose - it happens more or less out of habit, and because it takes his mind off other things.

Hogwarts during the summer is dismal, a place hollowed out at the core where Albus Dumbledore used to be. Harry tries not to think about the Headmaster. He'd have to remember how the last thing Dumbledore had tasted was the potion he, Harry, kept forcing down his throat until he cried, how his last words were a plea for mercy to Snape, how his body had looked shattered after the fall from the tower. He'd have to remember Hagrid's tears.

Thinking about those things makes Harry's eyes burn and his head hurt. Thinking about Snape just makes him want to break things. Ever since a glass of pumpkin juice met the stone wall of his dormitory in an explosion of shards and orange, he tries not to think of Snape at all. Thinking about Draco Malfoy is a carefully balanced compromise. After all, it's something that's been ingrained into Harry over a period of months.

Sometimes, Harry wakes up in the morning, one hand groping blindly through the bedcurtains for his glasses, slipping them onto his nose while the other digs out the Marauders Map from under his pillow. More than once, he's been at "...up to no good" before remembering that there is no Malfoy left at Hogwarts to locate.

Malfoy is gone, having failed to do his job for Voldemort, having refused to kill the Headmaster in front of a whole gang of Death Eaters. Voldemort, who already has a bone to pick with Malfoy's father...

At breakfast, sitting in the great hall as a honorary guest at the staff table - sitting alone in a sea of empty chairs at the Gryffindor table would be ridiculous - he squints sideways at the pages of the Daily Prophet, fearful of reading how Malfoy's body has been found dead in a shack somewhere with the Dark Mark floating above. And yet he scans every page carefully before he can breathe again. It makes him wish he could still peer into Voldemort's mind at night, pain and nightmares aside, but it remains barred against him. He's not sure if he wants to watch Malfoy writhing on the ground under Cruciatus, or thrown lifeless at Voldemort's feet in a cloud of green. But at least he'd know, then.

He manages to wipe Malfoy off his mind as he reads his letters. Hermione writes daily, Ron once or twice a week; cheerful, meaningless owls, trying to convey encouragement, with Pigwidgeon somersaulting in the air above the staff table to cheer Harry up. Harry knows that if he'd tried a bit harder, McGonagall might have let him spend the summer at the Burrow after Aunt Petunia's protection ran out on his birthday. But he remembers Ginny's sadness - her anger - when she realised that Harry's rash break-up of their relationship had been serious, not just a chivalrous gesture. Harry can't imagine holding on to his resolve in the presence of tears and accusatory silence, her soft skin, her fire-spun hair... Something knots in his chest every time he pictures her. No, thinking about Draco Malfoy is much safer.

Harry has been forbidden to fly his broom or leave the castle - for his own protection, just like they always insist. He spends an inordinate number of mornings leaning over the balustrade of the north corridor, trying to conjure a slight, nervous black-clad figure sneaking up the path to the castle, sunlight glinting off a cap of white-blond hair. But Malfoy won't come here now that Dumbledore is dead. He won't come to Harry for protection, and at last, Harry looks away into the distance.

Turning east, the hoops of the Quidditch Pitch beckon. To the west, the tree tops of the Forbidden Forest are swaying gently in the breeze. Behind the pitch, the rails of the Hogwarts Express are winding towards Hogsmeade. He'd refused Malfoy's hand way back on their first trip on the train, and now for the first time wonders what might have been if he hadn't... He wouldn't have wanted to go through his schooldays being friends with the little git, of course. But perhaps, if they'd been on speaking terms, Harry could've banged Malfoy's thick head against the wall a few times to get the ugly truth about Voldemort inside his dumb skull. Before Malfoy learned it the hard way, wearing the Dark Mark, and then for real up on the tower.

No, Malfoy has never been brave until that night, Harry muses as he strolls along the corridor between the Whispering Gallery and the Charms classroom. His solitary steps are echoing like drumbeats where normally crowds of students create their own cacophony of noise. Malfoy had been terrified in the Forbidden Forest, skin white and goose-pimpled like curdled milk. Too scared to show up for their duel, afraid even of Hermione when she'd slapped him. Always whiny, creating drama out of a bit of a scratch on his arm, or a bit of bouncing as a ferret. Only now, after years, Harry wonders how the thin bones and the sparse layer of fur on a ferret cushioned such an impact. Probably not well at all. And finally, Malfoy clawing and trembling with shock as he tried to curl into a ball under Harry's fists on the Quidditch Pitch.

Malfoy hadn't been afraid in the prefects' bathroom, at least not of Harry. The Sectumsempra had cut him down too quickly for fear. In the filtered sunlight spilling in through the rose-covered windows that line the corridor down to the Hufflepuff dorms, Harry can still see the blood coating his hands, sticky and fiercely crimson. Who’d have thought the pale little git would have so much blood in him?

He's never apologised, a point that still feels sore with Harry, like a splinter burrowed under a fingernail. There had been no good opportunity, but then he hadn't gone out of his way to try either. Because Malfoy had tried to hit him with Cruciatus. And because what could you say? 'Sorry I tried to slice you to bits and that you'd have ended up dead or disfigured for life if Snape hadn't showed up'?

He does not like to let his thoughts run further than that, because he doesn't want to think about that murdering coward. That would leave him poking listlessly through his lunch, and make the random glass shatter on the table.

It's bad enough that Professor McGonagall appears more ragged at every meal, returning late from talks with the Ministry, the School Governors, the Order... She's pelted with owls and howlers every lunch and breakfast, sometimes just grabbing a cup of tea and vanishing into her office in a whirl of feathers and envelopes when it becomes too much. The black strands of her hair have faded to uniform grey, her skin pulling tight over her bones, and every time Harry sees her lids swollen and red - though she turns away quickly when she sees him looking - he wants to murder.

He needs fresh air after lunch, and he's refused to budge on the grounds out by the lake, so he sits out by Dumbledore's marble tomb for hours on end, replaying the Headmaster's 'talk' with Malfoy on the tower before his inner eye. Malfoy, trying and failing to boost his resolve with Dumbledore's acknowledgement of his cleverness; Malfoy, despairing for his parents and his own life; Malfoy, lowering his wand and keeping it down at the end... If Harry had only been able to move! He might have hit Snape before he could cast the Killing Curse; there might not be a tomb here for him to sit next to. He might have been able to grab Malfoy, wrestle him to the ground and keep him before Snape could drag him off along with him.

Malfoy had been brave on the tower, the sort of bravery Dumbledore had praised in Neville years ago - the courage to stand up to your friends. Harry feels it intensely, although it's something as impossible to express in words as an apology for attempted murder.

Harry browses through the library most late afternoons, out of a vague sense of duty to Hermione. Although it doesn't even look as if he's going to get to take his NEWTS if the school closes. He's already near-thrown the OWLS because of Voldemort. Not that sitting yet another meaningless examination will matter in the long run, just as it didn't matter that Malfoy dropped his wine glass looking at Harry during their OWLS. Books won't help him with Horcruxes or Founder artefacts, not even those in the Restricted Section for which he's been given unspoken permission as Madam Pince isn't there to stop him. So he fiddles with and reads around in random spellbooks, aware that what might truly pay off would be another glimpse into Dumbledore's Pensieve. And he can't bring himself to look at that - not yet. The pain is still too fresh.

Again, he catches himself passing through the seventh floor corridor on his way back to Gryffindor tower whispering "I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing" to the walls without even thinking about it. He isn't surprised that the Room of Requirement never shows itself for him.

He takes his dinner alone in the common room as the remaining handful of professors prefer informality over the holidays, and he's politely refused invitations from Professor McGonagall, who he suspects wants to check up on his mental state, and from Slughorn, who seems determined to never again set foot outside the protective walls of Hogwarts. Although Malfoy's breached its defences from the inside, and Dumbledore's death makes sure it'll never be safe again. Dobby keeps popping in with trays laden with sandwiches and pumpkin juice and desserts, scenting his pillows with dried murtlap for ease of mind, while Harry absently stares into the fireplace. He's watched Malfoy holding court at the Slytherin table at almost every meal, almost every day, but has no idea what he likes to eat.

Between his crisp murtlap-and-lavender scented sheets, he recalls the feeling of Malfoy's sharp body under his, a flailing tangle of limbs and soft robes and cool skin as they grappled on the ground of the Quidditch Pitch. The memory of punching the little git still floods him with him satisfaction. He deserved it. He wonders if Malfoy felt the same twisted stirring when he kicked him in the face on the train with such blatant enjoyment. Heady triumph and churning heat tempt Harry's hand underneath the covers and down his hip until his mind catches up with it and he pulls away as if burned, rolling onto his stomach and tucking his hands under his chin until sleep claims him, or the birds outside conjure the daybreak.

And every new morning, as he unties his letters and feeds Hedwig slices of bacon, and Pig bits of egg - cooked meat makes him throw up - the compulsion to pen 'Meet me at the Hog's Head after sundown, ferret-face' on a scrap of parchment becomes stronger. Hedwig is a brilliant owl, and if any bird can find Malfoy, she will. He even catches himself scribbling it on a spare sheet in the middle of a note to Hermione, only to crumple it in a heartbeat and dash up, very flustered, to his dormitory where he proceeds to rip it into tiny shreds and flush it down the toilet.

Of course he'd prefer the company of Ron and Hermione, but he does want to talk to Malfoy - to ask him about Voldemort and Horcruxes, and even more so about himself. Maybe it's one of the constants of Harry's life that he never gets to ask the questions that matter, not with Sirius, not with Dumbledore, and not even with a malevolent little bastard who'd hex him as soon as look at him.

He knows he won't do it - it would endanger Malfoy if intercepted, cryptic address or not, and Harry, if Voldemort got wind of it and forced Malfoy to spring a trap on Harry. Not that Malfoy would come, of course.

But he can wish, can't he?

~ finis ~