Black Sheep

Chapter Thirteen
In Which There Is Truth (And A Whole Lot Of Moodswings And Even A Certain Large River In Egypt)

HARRY RECOILED, BACKING AWAY FROM Malfoy, and even Hermione had been stunned into silence. Staggering backwards, Harry attempted to sit on the edge of the bed, but missed and fell to the floor instead. He didn't pick himself up. At the table, Malfoy's anger had already gone cold. After five years, he'd long since used up all the anger he had. He said tiredly, "If you had wanted to come with me, you could have just asked. You didn't have to follow me all the way from Wiltshire under a damned invisibility cloak." He rolled his eyes and his glance slid to Harry, still awkwardly sprawled on the floor with his back against the bedframe. "Of course, I would have just said no, wouldn't I have?"

He sighed and continued, "And now you've really gone and buggered everything up." The blond leaned back in his chair, looking between Hermione and Harry's stunned faces. It didn't seem like those two were going to make any progress on their own. Raising his eyes to the ceiling helplessly, Draco muttered, "And you're even more useless than you usually are."
He pushed himself up from his chair and walked across the room to where Harry sat. He stood above him, looking down at that bowed dark head, then nudged him none too gently with one of his sock-covered feet.

"Oi." Harry flinched but didn't look up at him, so Draco dropped down to his haunches, putting himself about on level with the other man. "Look," he said in an exasperated tone of voice, "forget about what I said. I really don't blame you for what happened. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I chose to take you along to get the horcrux and I chose to pick the damned thing up, though I had guessed what it might do to me."

Harry finally looked up at him with dark eyes. "So it was the horcrux," he said in a flat voice. "You took it for me. In my place. Because I couldn't lose my magic, not and still beat Voldemort."

"You're such a conceited twat."

Harry's eyes widened but Draco continued in his disparaging tone, "I took it for you? And you always accuse me of being bigheaded. I took it for myself, you ass. I took it because I wanted the damned war over with. I wanted Voldemort gone. That's why everyone did what they did - they weren't helping you, they were helping themselves."

Pushing himself up again, Draco wiped the dust from his jeans and said finally, "So stop blaming yourself for other people's decisions, you absolute tosser."

He left this to sink in and threw himself back into the chair, wondering if he could still salvage anything from the situation. Harry continued to stare unseeingly at the floor, but now as the shock was receding, it was leaving him with a strange new feeling in its wake. And it wasn't simply shame or guilt or anything else he could recognise - and he knew enough about those to write a book.

Hermione had managed to unfreeze herself at some point during Malfoy's little 'pep talk' and she stepped closer now. Kneeling next to her oldest friend, she said softly, "Harry... I'm so glad you've come back..."

Harry looked up at her in confusion. "Come back? But I..." He searched her face and found no hint of the blank curiosity that she had used to face him with. "Wait, do you - do you mean you remember?"

With a wobbly smile, Hermione threw her thin arms around his neck, just as she had as a girl. "Oh, Harry, of course I do."

Staring awkwardly over her back, he asked in a bewildered tone, "But how? The last time..."

"Harry," she said fondly, wiping at her eyes, "you really are a fool sometimes, aren't you?" She laughed even as she cried, and tried to explain. "It's true that I had lost my memories for a time. But McGonagall had the best mediwitches and mediwizards from St Mungo's to help and I got most all of my memory back years ago. There are still some blank bits and fuzzy spots, but - oh, Harry!" She gently put a hand to his cheek, rough with stubble from a day without showering or shaving. "I couldn't have ever really forgot you."

Swallowing a painful ache in his throat, Harry said flatly, "Then you know about Ron."

There was an imperceptible degree of change and her face went from happy to pained, only her tears unchanging. "I know," she said softly. "It was a horrible thing that happened. But-" she started, then paused, trying to smile, though it was a still shaky, "and don't think I'm terrible for saying this - but I'm glad I didn't lose you both." She hugged Harry again, gently, and whispered into his ear, "I'm glad that you're still here."

Harry's mouth sagged open and he stared at Draco over Hermione's cloaked shoulders. The blond had pulled a thin flask from his back pocket and was taking a swig of something undoubtedly alcoholic from it. As he watched, Harry had to tell himself, He can't do magic. Draco Malfoy is not a wizard. Then he looked down at the curly head buried into his shoulder. And Hermione remembers me.

This was turning into the strangest morning of his life. He asked the room in general, "Am I having some strange dream?" Draco threw the flask at him nonchalantly and, thanks to his arms being stuck in Hermione's embrace, it struck him in the head painfully, causing him to yell, "Ow! Damn it, Malfoy!"

Draco grinned, though it was a bit less convincing than usual, and pointed out, "I'd say that's a no, then. Now give me back my flask."

Harry wriggled one arm free and picked up the silver flask, lobbing it back at the blond. Then he tapped Hermione on the shoulder unsurely. "Er, Hermione?" She looked up at him with a strange expression, a mixture of relief and fear. He told her, "I need to understand some of this. Would you mind just letting us talk for a bit?"

Pushing herself up embarrassedly, she quickly said, "Oh, yes, of course. I'm sorry for just... I mean, it wasn't very..."

Harry caught her arm, which stopped her babbling, but then didn't know what to say. But she seemed relieved by the small touch. She pulled away and reclaimed her seat at the little table. Draco was still sitting opposite her and spinning his flask idly on the tabletop, though at least he wasn't drinking any more from it. Harry continued to sit on the floor and look across at the two of them. His mouth went dry and he discovered that he had no idea how to react to all that had just been thrown in his lap.

He licked his lips and then asked the simplest question he had. "So people have been looking for me?"

"Of course!" Hermione gave him a surprised look as she exclaimed, "It's been five years since Voldemort fell and for all that time, none of us even knew if you were alive or dead!"

Harry's brow crinkled and he said, "But what about Ginny?"

Hermione's face filled with serious consternation. "What about Ginny?" she asked unsurely.

Glancing at Malfoy, Harry remembered what he had said about his house being Unplottable. Having caught Harry's eye, the blond nodded slightly. Harry turned his glance back to Hermione and said flatly, "Ginny has known where I live for years. And she's never told you?"

It appeared that all the blood rushed from Hermione's face. "She - she knew...?" Her breath whooshed out of her in disbelief. "Are you sure? I mean - she's always been the most desperate to find you! It seems like every week she owls me with some new idea about where you might be or how to find you..."

Harry looked back toward Malfoy again and the blond returned his look coolly, not saying anything. Harry ran his hands through his hair, letting his head fall forward so he didn't have to look at either of the room's two other occupants. "This is getting too complicated. I still need to understand just how we got here today."

He heard Malfoy clear his throat significantly and hazarded a glance up at the blond. Draco said in an irritated voice, "You are going to owe me for this explanation." Then he began to tell his side of the story. "When you told me what had happened to Granger, it seemed strange to me, because I was sure I had read something about her in the Prophet a couple of years earlier. About her becoming the newest and youngest professor at Hogwarts." Here Harry glanced at Hermione and she nodded slowly. "I thought that she must have had all of her enviable knowledge and memory restored to her, to be awarded such position. Memory charms can be broken, after all, if that was indeed what had stolen her memories."

"Memory charms can be..." Harry repeated the words softly and understood just how big of a fool he'd been. Of course he had known that, from first hand experience even! Hadn't he forced his way through Slughorn's self-inflicted memory charm in sixth year? Hadn't he seen in the Pensieve the testimonies that Dumbledore had got from memory charmed victims of Voldemort? He smacked his forehead with a fist and muttered, "I've been such an idiot, haven't I?"

"Nothing new, Potter," Draco assured him. "We're all quite used to it by now. At any rate, I suspected that Granger would also be looking for you. If you only read any newspapers, you would have known, as I did, that the Wizarding world has never given up on finding you. I realised that I could use her knowledge and resources for my pet project, and so I wrote to her that night and proposed a meeting. I told her that I knew where you were, thinking that I might be able to trade the knowledge of where you were for...well, you know."

"A way to get back your magic," Harry filled in. "The magic that you lost when you went with me to get the last horcrux."

"That'd be the one," Draco agreed easily. "Not that I really believe such a way exists. But when such an ideal opportunity fell in my lap - access to Hogwarts' library and the widely-heralded brightest witch of the generation - I figured I had to at least give it a try."

Hermione spoke up for the first time since she'd taken her seat, saying, "Now there's something that I've missed. You two went after the last horcrux? Together? And now you're - what? Friends?" She said that last word like she was describing some sort of contagious disease.

"Oh, ye gods, no," Draco said quickly, shaking his head. "We only just ran into each other a week ago. But we did go after the last horcrux together, five years ago. Snape and I had been researching it. Near the end, he was captured for being a traitor, but he managed to get me away at least. He told me to take the information to Potter, which I did. Together we went to find the thing, an armillary sphere made by Ravenclaw. I took care of the spells, since Potter here is a useless sot, and I knew that there was some kind of curse on the armilla."

"What do you know about it?" Hermione asked, her tone curious for the first time. It would be an impressive bit of magic.

"I could tell that it was a targeted curse, which would take something from whoever touched it. At the time, I wasn't sure what I would lose - could have been my my memories, my sanity, my soul, my life. Anything, really. It didn't matter much to me, since I knew I would be dead as soon as Voldemort found me anyway. And as complex of a curse as it was, it would only work once. I was quite sure of that and so I made sure that I grabbed it first." He glanced at Harry, then continued, "I believe that the magic it stole from me was then stored within the artefact itself. But I'm told by Potter that you and he performed a charm on it which removed all the magic from it. So I'm quite sure that there's no going back."

Harry looked at the dirty floorboards. "Where does magic come from?"

There was an amused laugh and Draco replied, "Now there's a question for the ages."

Hermione spoke up, her tone sober, "No one really knows. It appears that magic is something people are simply born with or not. There is no known way to change the magical ability you are born with - though many people have tried to increase their powers over the years, unsuccessfully." She looked at Draco critically. "There is also no successful way that I have ever heard of to transfer or give magic to the magicless. And you have the friends and family of many squibs to thank for that research."

Draco didn't show any signs of disappointment as he shrugged and said, "Like I said, I didn't come expecting a solution."

"However," Hermione interjected, looking at Harry with warm eyes, "you brought Harry back. And for that, I'll look into it more thoroughly."

For the first time, Draco looked faintly surprised at Hermione's behaviour. But he didn't say anything, and Hermione turned to Harry again and asked, "Where on Earth have you been, Harry?"

"You're going to kick yourself when you hear this," Draco muttered.

Harry glared at Malfoy. "I've been living in Wiltshire, in a small Muggle village."

"The same village," Draco decided helpfully to point out, "that his parents stayed in: Godric's Hollow."

"What!" Hermione exclaimed. "But that was one of the first places we thought to check! We asked everyone we met there if they had heard of you! We even showed them photos, in case you weren't using your real name!"

Harry asked blankly, "You did? No one ever said anything to me..."

Draco stepped into the conversation again. "And that's why I believe that someone has been purposefully helping you hide. When I realised where it was you lived, I knew that someone else must have thought of it over the years. Someone must have come poking around, asking questions. And yet they hadn't found you. It reeks of meddling magic."

Hermione had to agree, though she didn't like where the conversation was headed. "But then who could have done it?"

"That's not the real question," Draco interjected. "Like I said, anyone could have figured out that he would go to the same village as his parents. And that means that anyone could have put the spells on him. The real question is how is it that only the littlest Weaselette could find him?"

Hermione was shaking her head in denial. "But you found him!"

"I only know where he lives because he brought me into his house himself." Draco looked at Hermione with steady eyes. "I imagine that if you or I walked by the house without him inviting us in, we wouldn't even know it was there." Without turning around, he shot a question at Harry, "Did you ever invite the ginger in?"

"No," Harry admitted weakly, "she just started showing up uninvited."

Hermione suddenly stood up, shoving her chair back with a loud screech. "This is all just unfounded suspicions. We shouldn't jump to any conclusions. For now, why don't we just go back to the school? We can figure through things there, and everyone would be thrilled to see-"

"No!"

Hermione and Draco both turned to look at Harry. Even he looked a bit surprised at how vehement he'd been and he said a bit more reasonably, "No, Hermione. I can't go there."

She said pleadingly, "Why ever not? Harry, you've been missing for years!"

"And why do you think he never came out on his own?" Draco asked coolly. His eyes narrowed on Harry, who was staring at the floor again. "He's petrified. Aren't you, Potter?"

Harry looked up to glare at Draco and muttered, "Like you're one to fucking talk."

Draco grinned mysteriously and mimed making a tick in the air. Harry ground his teeth together in frustration, then admitted, "Yes, I am."

Smiling benignly, Draco spoke with all the gentle wisdom of a saint. "You should really learn to be honest with yourself, Potter, without me having to force your hand."

Harry squashed the urge to launch himself across the room at the blond, since beating him to a pulp wouldn't change the fact that Draco still had over ten questions to ask of Harry. Instead he finally stood up and brushed himself clean of dust. "I'm sorry, Hermione, but I can't." He stalked off to the en suite bathroom and closed the door behind him firmly.

He stood in the small bathroom, sagging against the door. What had he done now? He was sure that he looked like an immature git for running away to the bathroom, but he would look like even more of a git if he went back out now. He was tempted to apparate back home that instant, but he knew he ought to talk to Hermione more. But talking while Malfoy was there meant that Malfoy would wind him up the whole time. And talking without Malfoy there was more frightening yet.

Out in the bedroom, Hermione and Draco both stared at the bathroom door in silence. The seconds ticked by and finally there was the sound of a shower unwillingly starting up, with lots of squealing and spluttering. Draco smiled privately and muttered, "He's really painted himself into a corner this time."

Hermione turned to look at him sharply and asked, "What do you mean by that? You've been acting awfully familiar."

Draco shrugged infuriatingly and said, "I don't have to answer any of your questions." Then he walked over to the bathroom door and let himself in.

Standing in the shower, with the shower half-heartedly spurting hot water at him, Harry was pretending that he wasn't in Hogsmeade and that Hermione and Draco were not sitting just outside. Wrapped in a cosy bubble of denial, he was thinking of nothing but the feeling of the hot water on his skin, when he heard the bathroom door open. He drew back the shower curtain just far enough to stick his head around it and see Malfoy hoisting himself up to sit precariously on the edge of the sink. A small crack appeared in his bubble. As he ducked back under the hot water, he called out, "I'm not convinced that that's a good idea."

"When you can't conjure up chairs at will," Draco informed him, "you become a lot less picky about where you sit."

Scrubbing at his hair, Harry suggested, "The toilet would seem a more natural choice."

He heard Draco scoff, "You become a lot less picky. You don't lose all dignity, though."

Harry mulled over the idea that a sink was somehow more dignified to sit upon than a toilet for several long moments, as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. He asked, "Might I ask what you're doing in here?"

"Why? Does it bother you?"

Harry snorted, "Well, that should be obvious."

Draco hummed consideringly. "Really? Because you don't obviously seem very bothered at all. Are you?" He paused for a moment, but before Harry could come back with another glib remark, he said, "Ticky-ticky, Potter. That's question number nine for me."

Harry's hands suddenly stopped where they had been rinsing his hair. He thought about it. "I suppose not. It's a bit... odd, though. I don't generally have people in the bathroom with me. And by 'generally,' I mean 'ever.'"

He finished rinsing his hair, and picked up a small complimentary bottle of cheap conditioner. He started dumping it into his hand and Draco's voice came from the other side of the shower curtain. "I must say, you seem remarkably less disturbed than I would have expected about this whole 'no magic' thing."

A cold whisper of reality and Harry shivered even as the hot water continued to pour over him. He ran his hands through his hair, spreading the conditioner throughout it. "I feel like I already kind of knew it, deep down. I mean, it was obvious in a way. But still, now that I really know it, it's mind-boggling. But at the same time it's not, because I already knew it. So it's just strange, like I'm totally shocked and calm at the same time. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a voice screaming that it can't be true, and the rest of my mind is just telling me to get on with it. Does that make sense?"

"No. God, of course not." Draco asked disbelievingly, "How could that make sense? That was the most nonsensical string of English that I've ever heard."

Harry shrugged, though the other man couldn't see him, and washed the conditioner from his hair, then shut off the water. He immediately felt the cold air on his skin - there was certainly no warming charm on this shower. "Throw me a towel," he told Malfoy, and moments later one came sailing over the shower curtain. He caught it up and quickly rubbed it over his body, getting himself relatively dry before slinging it around his waist. He stepped around the curtain and saw Draco still sitting on top of the sink. He gestured impatiently for the blond to move and, with an aggrieved sigh, Draco stood up to lean against the bathroom door, much as Harry had earlier.

Harry picked up his wand from his pile of clothes and began using a shaving charm on his face, muttering as he worked, "I hate this spell. Why can't wizards use regular old razors like normal people?"

"I can tell you," Draco said conversationally, "'regular old razors' are much more of a pain for those unused to them."

Harry glanced at him from the corner of his eye and said agreeably enough, "I suppose so. I certainly cut myself up pretty badly when I was first learning." He finished his face and tossed his wand back onto the pile of his clothes. He turned on the tap and quickly splashed water on his face, wiping it clean with a hand towel. He asked, "So is Hermione still out there?"

"I believe so." He eyed Harry pointedly and then reluctantly asked, "You haven't gone into some sort of crazy denial, have you?"

"'Crazy denial'?" Harry repeated in an amused tone, though deep down he wasn't amused but screaming, Don'tsayitDon'tsayitDon'tsayit.

Draco nodded his head consideringly, and said, "Well, yes. Fifteen minutes ago you were acting like the world had fallen to pieces and now you are some sort of zen master."

Harry mouthed the words 'zen master,' making a disbelieving face at the mirror, and then said, "You really do watch too much Muggle television, don't you?"

"And you really are avoiding the question, aren't you? And the whole situation. Do you think you can just hide in this bathroom until everyone forgets? Do you really think that things can go back to 'normal' now? You're stuck in the real world now, Potter. And let me remind you that you brought it upon yourself."

Harry didn't say anything more, but stared at himself in the mirror as the seconds passed them by. All his protective delusions were in pieces on the floor. He looked at his own bleak face objectively. He had grown and his face had become harder and sharper than it had been when he was just a boy of sixteen, but he was still recognisable. Even with his glasses long gone, even with his scar covered by the thick black fringe that went past his eyebrows when he got too lazy to have his hair cut, those who had known him would still see him for who he was. His eyes slid over the blond leaning against the wall. Malfoy was the same, of course. They had both recognised each other in an instant, in the small clinic in Godric's Hollow. But then they did know each other's faces nearly as well as their own, after all those years of glaring across classrooms, quidditch fields and halls.

"You don't want to go either, do you?" he asked plainly.

Draco's only reply was to say, "Six years. The students who were first years when we left are seventh years now." He turned around and put his hand on the door's handle. He told Harry, "Get dressed, you daft git," and then he was gone.

Harry sighed, but started pulling his clothes back on. What would it be like to walk into Hogwarts now? As an adult and with everything that had happened since he'd left those halls? It was almost too surreal to imagine and yet here he was in Hogsmeade, barely a mile from the castle.

If someone really had been putting spells on him to keep him hidden, he should probably find out about it. And he'd been the one thinking about how he needed to do something with his life. And if there really was something that could be done for Malfoy...

Harry saw again in his mind Draco's tired face, as he had explained how he'd lost his magic. He must have had some idea in the back of his mind, after all the signs he'd seen, because Malfoy's revelation had felt like confirmation. Even the fact that it had happened when they had gone after the horcrux explained so much - Malfoy's behaviour in those last moments, his commanding Harry to take care of Voldemort once and for all, the reason why the Aurors didn't consider him much of a threat and so much more. And oddly Harry didn't immediately want to cut himself off from the shameful knowledge that what had happened to the other man at least partially because of him. He felt bad about it, of course, but rather than wanting to send Malfoy away, like he had done with his best friends, he thought that he wanted to do something about it.

Having come to this conclusion, he pulled the bathroom door open again and stepped back into the hotel bedroom. Hermione looked up from her seat at the small table and he told her, "All right. Let's go to Hogwarts."