Black Sheep

Harry was ennervated in the Hospital Wing and immediately bolted upright upon the hard hospital bed. "Malfoy!" he exclaimed, looking madly at Madam Pomfrey. "Where've they taken him?!"

Pomfrey had drawn back in shock and was frowning at him as she said, "I believe that Mr Malfoy has been taken to the Ministry to answer some questions, though I don't know much about it. You should ask the Headmistress if you wish to know-"

But Harry wasn't waiting any longer. He'd seen where waiting had got him: stunned by a former friend and left alone in the Hospital Wing. He yanked his wand out and brandished it overhead, yelling out, "Accio any damned broom that can fly!" Before he could even get off the bed, the large windows that filled the far wall of the Hospital Wing shattered violently, great shards of glass falling to the stone floor and covering several beds as well. Thankfully the beds were empty today. Over twenty brooms had come streaking into the large chamber, a number of them occupied by the shell-shocked members of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, who had been practising on the pitch several hundred meters away.

Harry grabbed the nearest unoccupied broom and leapt astride it. In some distant, sane part of his mind, he knew there was going to be hell to pay for this. But every other cell in his body seemed to be screaming out with the need to help Malfoy.

He shot out of the room faster than any of his witnesses had ever seen a broom go. As the last few panes of glass crashed to the floor, one of the Hufflepuff Chasers muttered, "Bloody hell, but he can fly."

The wind screamed past him as Harry flew more desperately than he had since the night he'd borne Dumbledore back to Hogwarts. Once again he was in danger of losing someone he cared about and depended on and needed. He couldn't accept that he had finally let someone into his life again only to lose him.

As soon as he had made it past Hogwarts' boundaries, he jumped from the broom, stumbling and nearly falling to his knees. He pulled his wand again as he pushed himself up and immediately apparated to the dank London street that held the one entrance to the Ministry that he knew of. Before the handful of downtrodden Muggles could wonder just where the man carrying the odd-looking broom had come from, he had ducked into the broken-down phone booth and disappeared again. Since few of the observers were entirely sober - and even fewer entirely sane - they didn't think too much of this.

Harry tumbled out of the visitors' entrance and into the cavernous atrium of the Ministry. He noted distantly that the horrid statuary had been fully restored in the seven years since Voldemort and Dumbledore had nearly destroyed it while duelling and Harry had last stood in this place.

Now, clutching a silver badge bearing his name in one hand and his superfluous broom in the other, he looked around wildly. People began to notice him. Then people began to notice just who he was.

A young witch scurrying past in official robes came stumbling to a stop. "Oh my word, you're Harry Potter." She clapped a hand over her mouth immediately, red with embarrassment. But she'd got his attention, for better or for worse, and Harry grabbed her by the shoulders, the broom banging into her side.

"The Aurors-" he said irrationally, "Neville and Dean - they brought Malfoy in for questioning. Where would they take him?"

The witched was dazzled into silence for a long moment. Harry Potter was holding her by her shoulders. He was asking about the most famous criminal since the war had ended and talking about Aurors she would never even dream of approaching. Her job at the Ministry mostly consisted of delivering tea and making duplicates of other people's work. She managed to squeak out, "I don't know!"

She saw Harry Potter's famous green eyes narrow impatiently and she quickly added, "But I can take you to the Auror Headquarters! They'll know!"

Harry nodded shortly and released his vice-like grip on her. Infected by his urgency, she grabbed him by the arm and ran for the bank of elevators that lined the far wall, weaving through the crowds that always filled the Atrium. Harry kept pace with her without a word and when she shoved her way past the queuing wizards at the elevators, he quelled every last one of them with a fierce look. The nearest elevator's doors slid open and the witch dashed forward, dragging Harry behind her. A portly bureaucrat spluttered angrily and she snapped at him, amazed at herself, "And how many times have you saved the free world? You can wait your bloody turn."

The man's startled eyes turned to stare at Harry in shocked recognition and then the doors clanged shut. In the momentary slow quiet of the elevator, Harry said belatedly, "Sorry. What's your name?"

"Matilda Bolger," she answered promptly, meeting his intense eyes. "I work in the Ludicrous Patents Office."

Harry almost smiled for a moment as he looked down at her determined little face. "Thank you, Matilda."

She blinked. She felt as if she finally knew just why people spoke of Harry Potter the way that they did. He had a presence. When he looked straight at you with those unbelievable green eyes, the rest of the world seemed to fade, just a little bit, as if he - and by extension, you and the moment you were sharing with him - was more real than everything else around you. And when he thanked you, you felt as if you would do anything to earn those words, that sincere tone, and that precious gratitude again.

The elevator pinged at them and announced, "Level Two. Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Auror Headquarters, Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, Wizengamot Administration Services." Matilda tore her eyes away from Harry, flushing a bit, as the doors opened onto the harshly lit hall. She hurried out and down the corridor, glancing behind herself just once to confirm that Harry was following. They arrived in front of a set of double doors set with a large brass plaque that read "Auror Headquarters." Hesitating only long enough to take a deep breath, Matilda shoved the doors open.

A couple of curious faces rose from the nearby desks to peer at the door. Their department rarely got visitors. Their whispers quickly drew more looks and within moments, a stocky figure stood up from a desk across the room. It was Neville Longbottom. He walked quickly towards the two, looking pained. His underlings watched avidly; they knew that he had worked with Harry Potter years ago during the infamous (within the Ministry, at least) Department of Mysteries Battle.

As he drew near, Neville held out his hand and said in an apologetic tone, "Harry. I'm so sorry we had to meet again under such unpleasant circumstances."

Harry eased ever so slightly and he took Neville's hand, shaking it firmly. "I'm sorry about it, too, Neville. Please - where is Malfoy now?"

Neville glanced at the desks behind them, full of bored and eagerly eavesdropping workers. "Let's talk in the hall," he suggested, holding the door open for Harry and sparing Matilda a questioning look as she followed them out.

As soon as the door had shut behind them, Neville started explaining in a quiet tone. "You have to understand, Harry, that there is procedure that must be followed in these situations. Personally, I would have preferred to handle things differently, but the tip came to Dean first, not me."

"What tip?" Harry asked sharply. "That Malfoy was at Hogwarts? But that's been out for over a week."

"No," Neville said reluctantly. "A tip that Malfoy might be searching for a way to restore his magic." His compassionate eyes searched Harry's face intently. "You must know that the loss of his magic was the only reason he was released from Azkaban the first time."

Harry went still. "You don't mean..."

Neville didn't look away from Harry's pale face. "I'm afraid that Dean has taken full advantage of the law and chosen to suggest the strictest procedures. Malfoy has been taken back to Azkaban, and he may be held there for up to ninety days without being formally charged."

Harry swayed back as if he'd been physically struck. Matilda stepped up behind him, afraid he might actually collapse.

Azkaban. The prison the damned fools at the Ministry had reopened and repopulated with Dementors, all because they wanted to punish the war criminals with long, torturous lives. A clean death wasn't good enough for the Death Eaters. Going back there would bring out every bad thing that had ever happened in Malfoy's life, and Harry didn't know anyone - not even himself - who had been through as much as Malfoy had.

"You're going to destroy him," Harry whispered, looking up at Neville in shock. "You're going to kill him. You know he won't be able to survive the Dementors."

"I know that," Neville agreed. "And I want you to know that I'm doing everything I can to get him out for questioning as soon as possible."

Through the haze of his panic, Harry muttered, "I would've thought you hated Malfoy at least as much as Dean did. Why would you try to help him?"

Neville's broad face twisted into a grimace. "I was there the last time - when they questioned Malfoy under Veritaserum, five years ago." He looked at Harry bleakly. "I've seen some awful things in my job, Harry, but nothing that could ever come close to the things he described. Even without Dementors, I don't know how someone could live with those memories and stay sane."

Harry realised that in this horrible way Neville Longbottom knew more about Draco than he did. He murmured through bloodless lips, "Well, he is a raging alcoholic." He managed to ask, "How soon can I get in to see him?"

The Auror flinched. "You know there are no visitors allowed in Azkaban," Neville reminded him gently.

Gripping his hands into fists, Harry asked in pained frustration, "Then what am I supposed to do? Just go home and wait to hear that he's gone mad, or... or..." He swallowed hard. "While I've been sitting on my hands and doing nothing?"

"No, but you should go home - or back to Hogwarts, actually, if you wish to avoid the press - and let me get back to doing my job for you." He put a reassuring hand on Harry's shoulder. "I will owl you with every bit of news."

The look Harry gave him was not a pleasant one and the black-haired man said hollowly, "I can't lose another person in my life, Neville. I've lost too many already."

"I know, Harry," the man who could have been the Boy Who Lived said softly. "But don't forget that you haven't lost everyone." He smiled awkwardly. "I'd like to think that we were friends once, too. Maybe when we get all of this sorted, you'll join me and some of the old guard for a drink. I'd really like it."

Harry realised he might like it too, but it was too unimaginable just now. He nodded silently for a moment, and then he said, almost an afterthought, "I'm sorry for just crashing in on you like this." He frowned. "You'll owl me? With anything, anything at all. Or if there's anything I can do..."

"I will, Harry." Neville shook his hand once more and turned to the almost-forgotten witch behind Harry. "Will you make sure he gets out of the Ministry without any trouble or - worse - any reporters?"

"Of course, Mr Longbottom!" she said smartly, and she drew Harry gently back to the elevators. Harry came along slowly, glancing back at Neville, who smiled reassuringly at him before stepping back into the Aurors' offices. Following the Ministry witch mutely, Harry found himself back in front of the bank of elevators. Luckily no one else was around - most workers were in their offices in the middle of a Monday afternoon, after all.

Matilda reached out to call the elevator and she jumped in surprise when Harry's hand darted out and caught hers in a soft, precise grip, as if it were a snitch. She turned to him but he wasn't looking at her. As he stared unseeing at the wall to his right, he said tiredly, "I'm not quite ready to go back yet. Is there some place I can go? Some place where I can sit down, and not be recognised?"

She thought for a moment, then said brightly, "I think I know just the place!"

It took a long circuitous route of rarely used stairwells and empty halls full of closed office doors, but after about ten minutes, they were closed up in a tiny kitchenette on Level Seven and had not run into a single person. "This is where I make the tea, for my rounds," Matilda explained as she poured Harry a cup from the pot of Darjeeling she'd just prepared. "No one else ever comes in here - they probably don't even know this room exists."

She placed the cup in front of him on the narrow counter. "Cream or sugar?"

Harry graced her with another of his awkward, grateful smiles. "This is fine. No, this is just great. Thanks."

She beamed. He asked concernedly, "Are you going to be in trouble, being away all this time?"

Matilda almost giggled as she explained, "No one will notice a thing. A grunt like me? They'll all just assume that I'm off running someone else's errands or something."

Harry wrapped his hands around the hot mug of tea and said, "Well, thank you, for all of this." He brought the mug to his lips and then paused. "I just can't face going back yet - it feels like giving up somehow."

The witched chewed on her lip for a moment, and then she dared to give her opinion to Harry Potter on his personal life. It was like telling the Minster of Magic himself just what she thought of his policy on Muggles. "It's not giving up," she said. "There's really nothing more you can do right now, short of storming Azkaban."

He didn't immediately agree and she realised that, while anyone else would know immediately it was a joke, he might actually consider storming Azkaban prison. She said more shrilly than she meant to, "Which would be a bad idea!"

Harry was jolted back to the present and his lips quirked into a small smile. "I'll try to resist any urges." But then he fell into that dark silence again.

Matilda looked nervously at the teapot. She spoke in its direction. "Look, I don't know anything about you or this Malfoy character. I'm just an office worker, right? But I am sure that if you and this Malfoy are as good of friends as you seem, that he'll know you're doing everything you can to help him. And I think that - even in a place like Azkaban - or, I don't know, especially in a place like Azkaban - that he'll feel better, knowing that."

He looked up at her, startled, and when she happened to glance up from the teapot, she caught his piercing green eyes. She looked down again, mumbling, "I mean, I'm sure I would..."

"Thank you, Matilda," he said, then laughed at himself. "That's all I seem to be able to say, isn't it?" He fell silent and looked down at the mug in his hands. His eyes caught a dark smudge and he turned his right hand so that his palm faced him. In the middle of it were the three words Draco had written the previous night. Harry swallowed hard.

"Oh!" Matilda had noticed his distraction and followed his eyes to the words on his hand. "Vivamus, atque amemus," she raid them aloud almost reverentially.

"Do you know what it means?" Harry asked in a tight voice.

She was flustered. "Oh, er, well, it's Catullus, isn't it? 'Let us live, and let us love'... right?"

As soon as she'd said it, Harry recognised the obvious Latin roots, though he never would have known their inflections. Viv. Amor. He wished he'd been the one to leave Draco some message, where he'd gone. He buried his face in his hands, feeling that emblazoned palm pressed against his cheek. Before Matilda could feel even more alarmed, though, he dropped his hands again to reveal a determined expression. "That's right," he said fiercely. "And I'm going to fix this. Let us bloody live, indeed."

Matilda had even managed to find an official Floo gate in some back office that was almost never used, and so Harry was able to Floo back to the History rooms at Hogwarts without any further complications or attention. He had thanked the witch one last time and disappeared into a rush of green flames, carrying his stolen broom at his side. Matilda watched Harry Potter go and, thinking to herself that no one would ever believe the day she'd just had, she went back to her usual small life.

Harry stumbled out of the dusty fireplace in the disused offices of the History Master. He really did hate Flooing. He tried to knock some of the soot from his person, but when he had finished banging around with that, the silence was complete and heavy.

He walked slowly to the door and opened it, looking out onto the empty lecture hall where he'd stood that morning with Malfoy. He could see the teacher's desk which Draco had been leaning on the last time Harry had seen him. But the room was empty now.

Carrying the broom with him, Harry left the History rooms in their silence and headed for the Hospital Wing. The windows had all been repaired already, of course, but that didn't matter. He apologised to Madam Pomfrey for his earlier behaviour and while she still wasn't pleased with him, she softened a bit in appreciation of his coming to apologise in person. Next he headed back to the main entrance and from there he Banished the broom back to where it had come from. Hands empty again, he started tiredly climbing the moving staircases of Hogwarts.

When he arrived, he stood blankly in front of the phoenix statue that guarded the Head's office. Long gone were the days when he had known Dumbledore's passwords like they were his own. Now he struggled to remember the evening when he and Malfoy had stood here with McGonagall. He'd already begun to notice Malfoy at that point, so he'd been staring at Draco in his form-fitting Muggle clothes rather than paying attention to what McGonagall had been saying. But he remembered them bantering about sweets or something...

"Mars bars," he muttered to himself, then he recalled the phrase: "Deep friend Mars bars!" He waited a moment, pondering the possibility that the Headmistress might have changed her password. But then the statue began to move with a loud grinding noise and the revolving stair appeared before him. He stepped onto it and allowed it to carry him up to the office in the tower above.

He was only half-surprised to see Hermione standing in that office and holding the door open to him expectantly. "Harry!" she cried. "Is it - are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said tiredly, "though I can't say the same for Malfoy right now." He brushed past her and stopped in front of McGonagall's desk. "Professor McGonagall, I'm sorry for causing a disturbance earlier in the Hospital Wing and I'm sorry for the trouble that Malfoy and I have brought to the school. I'll understand if you want me to leave, but I would like to say here a bit longer, if you'll allow it, to find a way to help Malfoy."

She returned his look gravely. "Then is Mr Malfoy...?"

"Yes," Harry confirmed her suspicions, "they've taken him back to Azkaban."

She looked at the heavy wooden desk that had served so many before her and nodded. "Then I am as responsible as you, Mr Potter, for where he is now. I allowed him access to our prized vaults, never imagining it would come to this." She caught Harry's hard eyes. "Of course you may stay. And though I can't promise much, if there is anything I can do to help, you must ask me."

Harry nodded, but his expression didn't ease at all. "Thank you, Professor McGonagall."

She sighed. "I suppose I'll have to ask Mr Filch to watch the History classes again. I'd begun to hope Mr Malfoy might be with us for a while."

Harry felt a hollow ache in his chest, as he felt Draco disappearing from Hogwarts just as suddenly as he had first arrived. "If it is any help," he said, "I can at least watch his classes. It would make me feel a bit less useless as I wait to hear from the Ministry."

"Yes." McGonagall looked at him in a considering way. "That would be fine."

"Then if you'll excuse me," he said flatly. McGonagall waved him away, suggesting that he get his rest. Hermione watched him step onto the stairs, knotting her hands worriedly. She made her excuses to McGonagall and dashed down the stairs after him.

"Harry!" She ran after him in the empty corridor. "Harry, wait!"

He paused but didn't turn around. His mask of composure was near the breaking point. "Hermione, I've got some things I'd like to do and then I think I'll do as McGonagall said and get some rest. I'll talk to you tomorrow, if you don't mind."

Hermione flinched back from his coolly polite tone. She was aching to know what had happened, but she said weakly, "Of course, Harry. Any time you want to talk..."

He didn't say anything more but headed off to the staff quarters in heavy silence. Hermione watched him go helplessly.

Alone in the History professor's rooms, Harry slowly undressed. He hung his jacket back in the wardrobe where the rest of Draco's clothes hung and paused there for just a moment, before turning away. He left the jeans and shirt he'd been wearing on the floor for the house elves and walked into the bathroom, muttering the charm to bring the lights on. They sprang to life as he stared at himself in the mirror for some time. His body was ropey and though he didn't cut such a clean figure as he had as a teenager, when he'd practised Quidditch for hours on end, he was still in all right shape. He did look pale, though, especially under the bright magical lights. He stared at his own face intently, wondering how he must look to others. He wondered what Malfoy saw when he looked at him.

As he turned his head from side to side, his vividly green eyes never left their mirror reflection. Finally he dared to bring one shoulder forward and slowly twist his body away from the mirror. He caught the first glimpse of the writing on his back. There was more than he'd expected. Swallowing hard, he went into the front room and got a piece of parchment and a self-inking quill from the desk there. He stepped back into the bathroom's harsh lights.

Awkwardly craning his head back to read the mirrored script on his back, Harry tried to copy Draco's words. He couldn't approach the other man's elegant handwriting but he did the best he could to copy all the neat words that ran from his left shoulder blade down into the small of his back before arching back up to encircle his right shoulder blade, like a strange pair of wings made out of ink and Latin.

When he had finished, he drew an unsteady breath and walked again to the front room, muttering "Nox" behind him as he went. He sat at the small writing desk and held his wand over the paper gently. He softly spoke one of the translating spells that Draco had made him learn for their research and immediately English lines began to appear under his shaky handwriting. He read them once, and then again. Then he stood up, picked up Malfoy's enchanted decanter, and went to bed alone.

Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes

tuae sint satis superque.

Quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,

furtivos hominum vident amores:

tam te basia multa basiare

vesano satis et super Draco est.

Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus. Ita repeto iterum, ateque iterum.

You ask me how many of your kisses

must I have before I will be satisfied.

As many as the stars that, when night is silent,

watch the secret love affairs of men.

When you give me that many,

then will your dragon be satisfied.

So give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred,

and another thousand, then a second hundred,

and give me still another thousand, and a hundred.

Give me until the thousands become so many

that we lose count, so that I can ask you again, and again.